The Art of Editing with Douglas Crise, Claudia Castello & Michael P. Shawver

In this podcast episode, New York Film Academy takes a closer look at the craft of editing with three masters of the craft Douglas Crise, Claudia Castello, and Michael P. Shawver. Douglas Crise's credits include Ocean's Eleven, Academy Award-winning films Traffic and Birdman. Claudia Castello, and Michael P. Shawver have worked together on Fruitvale Station, Creed, and the billion-dollar blockbuster, Black Panther.

Eric: Hi I’m Eric Conner senior instructor at New York Film Academy, and in this episode, we’re taking a look at film editing.

— There is a freedom to be able to cut to coverage. I mean there’s a freedom to be able to say I can cut to the other side. I can cheat a line over somebody’s back.

I would work on his scenes and he would work on my scenes. It’s kind of a different way of editing.

The interesting thing about Claudia and I is that one of us is the ying and one is the yang. I mean we are opposites. —

Eric: While the work of directors cinematographers and writers might contain cinema’s most visible style. Editors have a very different goal for their work: to be invisible. Most audience members are so drawn into storytelling that we don’t even realize how much work goes into cutting to make accurate pop, shape performances, and create emotion. But show even the least trained eye a bad cut, they’ll notice. For our look at the invisible but crucial art of editing. We’re exploring two different Q&As Douglas Crise the OOscar-nominated editor of Babel spring breakers and Birdman and the editing team of Claudia Castello and Michael P. Shawver who worked together on Creed, Fruitvale Station, and most recently, Black Panther.

— I’ve been fighting. My whole life every punch I’ve ever thrown has been on my own. Nobody showed me how to do this.

You are Apollo Creed’s son.

I’m afraid of taking on the name and losing.

You’re scared to death that you don’t matter and you know what you’re right you don’t.

You’re Birdman you are a god —

Eric: All three editors initially honed their craft in film school. In Douglas Crise’s case, he needed this education to figure out his true calling in the entertainment industry.

Douglas Crise: I would say you know when I went to film school I didn’t know I was going to end up in editing and I initially thought I wanted to do photography or something else like that. But when I got out here and started interning I ended up in a cutting room and I found that that’s where I belong. And I was doing film. Editors that I – you know, I admire – I don’t know a lot about film history of great editors – I mean you could certainly say people like Walter Murch. Who directed Sound of Music? Bob Wise, he was the director, you know he edited Citizen Kane. He started out as an editor. So you know I would say Jerry Greenberg who cut French Connection. You know Michael Khan’s a great editor. I think Dylan Tichenor is one of the better editors around. I think I’ve worked with one of the greatest editors that exist right now, Stephen Mirrione. And I think Stephen is probably the biggest influence on me, completely because he’s the one who pushed me to start cutting and even from our very first film together. He would say, “can you cut this scene for me?” And, “can you do this scene”? You know? And working on Traffic, he would give me a lot of scenes to cut. “Say, can you cut? Can you do it or you want to cut this or you want to do this?” And the more we worked together like even on 21 Grams he would basically say, “Can you get the last half of the movie edited?” Because he would be so busy polishing the part he’s working on you. He’d say, “can you just get that together?” I sometimes struggle through an assembly because in some respect I don’t want to change it after I’ve done it. So I struggle through the assembly to get it the way I want it to begin with but I find recutting actually easy to some extent because it’s like, you know, then you play with it.

Eric: Meanwhile Claudia and Michael’s time in film school introduced them to the work of fellow student Ryan Coogler the man who’d eventually direct the Black Panther to his billion dollar reign.

Michael P. Shawver: You know I was like most film students you think directing is it like you want to be a director you want to be that Scorsese you want to be that Speilberg. And so I went and I took a directing class and there’s this guy making these two three minute short films. That were just incredible that make me feel something that would change my mind about things and you know I’m the guy that’ll sit in the back I’ll take everything in from there. But there’s something that just compelled me and my gut said you need to talk to this guy. And I just went up to him I said, “Hey man like I don’t know how but I need to work with you. You’re making all this stuff that I want to make.” And he’s like, “alright.” He’s like, “for sure man!” And that’s how I met Ryan Coogler. You know that that kicked off you know everything and Ryan had basically already you couldn’t choose before but he was like, “Iwant Claudia.” I don’t know if he ever told you this but he was like, “I want Claudia Claudia Claudia.” And I kind of came in and he had already kinda decided on this other guy but I threw my name in. And he liked the work that I was doing. But I think the thing that really sort of got me that job which got me this career and kicked it off was was he was shooting this short. The next morning the day before Thanksgiving everybody was going home and he was like, didn’t really know what to do for production design he was like, “Hey man do you know how to production design” I was like, “yeah yeah.” Again fake it till you make it. So, like that was like 10:00 at night I woke up at 4 am like, “oh my god I don’t know what I’m doing,” but that day I was a production designer, set dresser, first AC gaffer, just – I got lunch, like every every little thing and what I learned was you know, find opportunity and you know, meet the people and follow your gut. But then once you get the opportunity just work your ass off you know, give give give what you have and be a good person.

Eric: Michael and Claudia soon learned that their different approaches, as well as their backgrounds, made them ideal editing partners in crime.

Michael P. Shawver: The interesting thing about about Claudia and I is that we are one of us is the Ying one of us is the yang like we are opposites. Like I’m kind of a like intense dude from the northeast and she’s a super laid back former professional surfer from Brazil. So you know we kind of attack things a little bit differently and kinda what she was saying on Fruitvale. We came on after they had already shot so the whole movie was already shot and we kinda got to divvy up what it was and she edits very organically and with feeling and I’m I’m a little more of like why is this cut like this why is this like this so kinda when we both have our take. They’re different enough that they work and we get we get in our creative discussions and heated heated debates about this frame or that frame or this shot that shot. This is what it says about the character and whatever and Ryan jokes he says when she and I actually agree on something that he knows to use it in the movie. But yeah a big thing of it too is the passion. We still have that because Ryan is such a great human being and a great filmmaker and makes such compelling stuff. It’s our first opportunity to say ok we’re the editors of this this is going to be ours we have ownership over it. And I think that’s something you never want to want to lose you know. I mean even if I’m doing a project I’m not super super thrilled about or in love with you find a reason to love it. You find a reason to love these characters to care about this because if you’re working such long hours and we never you know if Claudia is going I want to cut the scene like I’m feeling it like she wakes up she comes in like ready to beat somebody up I’m like whoa take the scene and do your thing you know so so we kind of let each other be who we are you know in the editing room and I think that diversity can create some amazing things.

Eric: So much of editing hinges on the ability to collaborate both with others in post-production and most importantly with the director each of whom has their own approach to working with their editors. While cutting Spring Breakers Douglas Crise found that Harmony Corinne gave him a lot of freedom possibly too much.

Douglas Crise: You know I would almost say maybe Harmony’s a little too relaxed because you know you want that director who will push you. I don’t like a guy who hovers all the time. You know the brilliant thing about harmony is he inspires you to do stuff without hovering. He inspires you to try things and do things. But I work with like Nick Jarecki on arbitrage and he’ll certainly give you your own time but then you have the hours that he’s with you that you’re trying this and trying this and trying this and trying you know it’s tiring because I think Nick described it to me the first time I never even realized that how hard your job is sometimes where you have to use the mechanical sense of the software and putting things together. But then you got to think creatively at the same time and when you’ve got a director feeding you creative ideas from behind my creative end starts to shut off because I have to keep up with the mechanics while he’s throwing fast. Creative ideas at me and directors who just do that to you. It’s hard to keep up and you can’t give them the input back. So I think if they give you the breathing room then you’re like they’ll tell you to do something and then they leave and then you say well I did what you wanted. But I now I came up with this idea that I think works even better or this let’s try this. So I think you need a little bit of both.

Eric: After working with Alejandro Iñarritu on babel and birdman Douglas Crise feels the director is the perfect collaborator supportive of the editor’s vision while still pushing them to do their best work.

Douglas Crise: He never wants to compromise Alejandro’s a very particular guy an has his idea how to do it. He doesn’t want to change if he can. I mean you know he wanted to make a movie that took away the safety of cutting because Alejandro is a he’s a genius editor himself I mean he doesn’t actually physically ever touch the computer but he knows all the possibilities of an editing room and that’s where he even pushed me like you know he knew I could do something with this if I tried if there was something that we thought we couldn’t you know I’m like it’s one shot what am I going to do with it. No no no. There’s a way to make this work. And he wanted to make a film where he wasn’t relying on the editing room as much and he he said to me when I did one of my many visits to set he was so stressed and he was like saying that he’s like I got to get it right getting it right. I can’t fix this later. It’s got to be I got to keep all those ideas in the head. You know there’s the pacing there’s everything. You know he would script edit on set. He would shoot the scene then shoot it again with less dialogue and shoot it with less dialogue and shoot it again with. So he’d have because he knew we couldn’t cut the tape so we’d be like you know we got it we got to have our option of what what we’re gonna do here.

Eric: When Claudia and Michael collaborated with Ryan Coogler on Fruitvale Station. The director was so involved with the editing process that he all but moved in with them.

Claudia Castello: I went to Brazil. I took some time. I was like, “Okay I’m done with film school and now I’m going to rest.” And then I got a call like, “we need you guys to work with me. There’s basically no pay. You’re going to live in the same house. Michael lived in the closet”

Michael P. Shawver: For a while, for Fruitvale I lived in a closet. It was a one bedroom apartment they put us in an I’m obviously going to let Claudia have the room.

Claudia Castello: It was very nice to have.

Michael P. Shawver:The only other little enclave was it was a closet no door had a had a curtain and it fit an air mattress fit perfectly like a twin air mattress just fir perfectly right inside it that was it. That was that was I mean we were working like seven days a week. Also if anybody was doing laundry my light had to be on. So that’s just that’s so no naps

Claudia Castello: No laundry after 10 and we didn’t stop working it was like work work work work and then little sleep and then work work work. It was it was massive. It was a lot of work but we were really passionate about the subject about what we were doing. So in the end it definitely paid off. There were days where Ryan didn’t go home. He slept right there in this sofa. And then there was one day that he went to the bathroom…

Michael P. Shawver: Let’s just say you know you you know you when you’re up for hours and hours and hours and everybody gets loopy like you think something’s been said or done and you just start cracking up. We’re going to leave it at that and lets

Claudia Castello: There are funny things that happened because we are so tired

Eric: Fruitvale Station starring Michael B Jordan focused on the true story of Oscar Grant, an unarmed young man who was shot and killed by a transit police officer in Oakland. Michael and Claudia were proud to put in the time to help share such an important personal story to a mass audience.

Claudia Castello: We have a serious problem with the media in the whole world nowadays that everything’s so polarized. Then you have to read so much to kind of start understanding what’s going on in the world and human rights issues is not a priority for the media. And I found in film a very powerful tool to touch those subjects without people turning their face away. You know, I think when you go to the movies you kind of let the guards down and you’re there for how many you know an hour and 20 minutes and you open yourself to see what’s on the screen. So whatever the filmmaker puts there on the screen it’s really really really powerful. So I think it’s important for all of us to have the awareness of what we can do. You know as communicators because film is an art form but it’s also a very powerful form of educating people or raising awareness. And that’s I think what we’re dealing Fruitvale Station. We had an opportunity to humanize a victim and a victim by the eyes of the media is never humanized. And I think every one of us here have that opportunity to use for the best. And that’s that’s why I I make movies actually.

Eric: The biggest pressure the filmmakers felt was when Fruitvale Station premiered at Sundance not because of the festival’s prestige or even its A list audience but because of one important family in attendance

Michael P. Shawver: Specifically with Fruitvale. So Oscar Grant’s family was going to see this movie for the first time at Sundance so we didn’t even care about Sundance we that was whatever we were done with the movie just happy. But his family was a big thing and the first cut of the movie Oscar was the nicest human being you’ve ever met in your life. And it was good. It worked. But there’s something that we weren’t we weren’t being true because nobody is the nicest person ever all the time. And there’s a scene in the movie where where he goes to get his job back and they did one take where he threatens his boss like you want to see me outside I’m gonna wait till you’re done I gotta feed my daughter. It’s amazing. That was the one take that he got mad everything else he was just kind of like begging.

— I hired somebody else for me to bring you back that means I have to let someone else go. I’m sorry. I like you man but I can’t – I need this f*****g job breh. You want me selling dope breh? You need me outside waiting for you to get done breh? —

Michael P. Shawver: It was towards the end we went in and just cut this. And it changed the movie completely because it made him a more complex character and through his interactions with his family and his daughter and his mother and his girlfriend we all have and having this like he could be nice he can be he can be all these things to all these different people. I think that actually brought people closer to him and saw like we could relate so that we could relate to getting frustrated. We can relate to having our mom say you don’t be driving with you know whatever. So there’s sort of this addage I guess it’s. When you make things more specific to a character they become more universal. And so you know and in those those specific moments those specific relationships and the textures of those are what make people feel and cry for Oscar you know which they wouldn’t have watching a news report.

Eric: One of the editor’s most time-consuming responsibilities is combing through a productions dailies that’s the daily footage that’s captured on set depending on the director. This could be an hour of material or so many feet of film. It stretches a hundred football fields. Douglas Crise experienced this dichotomy first hand when working with Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh and Alejandro Iñarritu.

Douglas Crise: They’re both very committed and very good filmmakers I mean Iñarritu’s more I would say. You see his passion on his sleeve more and you see his emotion more and until maybe Birdman again he went to a comedy if you can call it a comedy because you know to him movies where you’re having a good time are a waste of time. You know you have to be feeling something you have to feel anger you have to feel you know despair. And Soderbergh is more of a cool cat. I mean he’s very quiet and doesn’t really talk a lot but he’s very sure of himself you know and shoots a lot less. He has a pretty good idea what he wants and once he gets it he’s done. I mean there were I, especially on the like the Ocean’s Eleven movie you know there was days we got 500 feet of film. He got what he wanted he was done and that’s not a small movie. I mean we had a nice big long schedule but the only day we got a lot of film was the day they had all 11 characters in the same room and they had to shoot coverage on all of them. That was the day we got I don’t know 30,000 feet. I think in film back then days because we were still getting film and winding it. And even though we cut it on the Avid we were still thinking dailies on film but they definitely work differently. The two of them but you know both talented in their own way.

Eric: A quick definition here. The first assembly is the first cut of the film usually done when it just wraps production. It’s a chance for the filmmakers to see the basics of what they captured. Douglas Crise adores this part of the process because it gives him the opportunity to show the director how he initially sees the film.

Douglas Crise: My biggest influence initially is the assembly because I’m assembling the movie and they have no input. So I cut the film together. And by the time they show up I’ve got a cut of the movie. Now it’s usually too long and it’s usually boring and it’s usually you know and it’s got all kind of problems and story things don’t make sense. And then I give the director his moment right. I don’t say anything hardly. I’m like Okay we’re gonna work the next couple weeks and I want to hear everything you want to do I’ll even tell a director what I love to do and I do this to harmony too is we won’t watch the whole movie when they come in for the first time this is what I prefer and this is what I always try to talk them into. They’ll come in and I’ll say let’s watch 20 minutes. You tell me what you hate about this 20 minutes what I got completely wrong. What performance I put in that you absolutely hate or this or that or or you know you want to try some music and then let me work on that 20 minutes and then tomorrow we’ll watch the next 20 minutes or whatever and then you would do the same thing and then like a week or so now we’ll watch the whole movie at least then they’ve put their stamp on it a little bit and then we will go through it again and I’ll work on their cut. But then after we were in that stage after you know a few weeks where I let them just tell me what they want. I try to give my perspective of saying OK now this is what I think or this is what this is working and then we’ll watch the movie with other people and then it becomes a back and forth hopefully. But I always usually take my feed from the director as much as possible.

Eric: When working on Creed a continuation of the Rocky saga. Michael and Claudia had to do a tremendous amount of work before a frame of the movie was even shot in a way much of their first Assembly occurred prior to the first day of filming.

Michael P. Shawver: We want to make this movie for everybody so people who’ve never seen a Rocky movie in their life can watch this pick it up. Not miss a beat you know but there were some previz work pre-visualization. A lot of big movies do it. Marvel does it like crazy like just just for money and stuff like that like they plan every single shot as much as they possibly can. So before creed even shot they had Claudia cut together storyboards and animatics from the final fight so Ryan and the producers can see like okay this is going to work out if we cover it you know this way and then I had the task two tasks one of which was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as an editor but it was cool because Michael B Jordan came over to my house and watched boxing. Ryan had me break down the script and find every single line of action boxing action. Find it on the Internet, real boxing fights. Download that stuff, and cut it all together into a timeline. It’s like editing something when you don’t even know if the footage actually exists. So it was terrible so that was the realistic aspect that Ryan always goes for. You know the real the punches feel like they hurt you know I mean like Ryan was always like if the punch doesn’t look like it hits take it out movie I don’t care if I wrote it I don’t care if I love it like take it out if it doesn’t feel real. The other thing that we do that Ryan had me do was basically think of every single fight of every single movie I could ever think of and basically cut together these sequences of every fight from every movie. Like everything from Play It To The Bone that Woody Harrelson boxing movie to Girlfight you know all the Rockys so. So we saw what it would do. Now if you go back and watch the Rocky fights. They’re terrible boxing. They’re this far away you know.

Claudia Castello: So special effects weren’t that good.

Eric: As someone who grew up around Philadelphia I do not condone any negativity against Mr. Balboa. But as Claudia and Michael pointed out special effects have advanced so much since the 70s and helped make Creed’s punches land both figuratively and literally.

Michael P. Shawver: Now VFX I don’t tell a lot of people this but VFX did some amazing stuff. They could actually make punches hit if they didn’t hit so and they would ripple the face and put like sweat coming off and blood coming out and stuff like that. So. So if we had this scene that we loved there’s that awesome shot that actually passed through the ropes and back in the ring and out of the ropes when they’re just wailing on each other. And there was one that that was just missed completely but they were able to fix that to kind of keep that. But yeah I mean there’s you know when you when you do a Rocky movie like you’ve got to be…I’m actually more worried now doing the Dirty Dancing remake so I’m more terrified of all the girls that are texting me like you better get this right. I’m going to this is my favorite movie I’m having the time of my life. But what we wanted to do with the fights and I honestly think this is this is why it’s so effective. I mean obviously the set up for the fight you care about the characters and it’s funny when we first cut the fight together, we just cut the boxing and it wasn’t until we started adding the reaction shots of the mom and the girlfriend and Rocky that you actually like oh my guy. Like I’m feeling emotion for these people. It’s what the other people who care about this character are feeling just as much if not more than than that guy. So the thing with the fight is it’s not just punching. It’s an emotional journey it’s rocky coaching him it’s him. It’s that father-son relationship it’s getting your ass kicked and then coming back and showing you got a little something and then going to the depths of hell in those awesome Raging Bull homage shot. And it’s an emotional fight an emotional journey where if you watch a lot of these other fights it was just punch punch punch punch punch punch punch oh my god like that hard punch look at this blood look at whatever we tried to bring as much emotion humanity story you know and always goes back to story. Montages, fast cuts, lots stuff happening but there’s a story there’s Adonis not getting it. He gets in a fight with the other dude. Rocky tells him to shut up and listen. And then he starts to get it. That’s the story of that montage. You know it’s really story. It’s always it’s going back to story and above the action the hard hits all that.

Eric: The Oscar-winning Birdman was made to feel like it was one continuous take. The irony is making a film look like had no cuts. Actually takes a tremendous amount of cutting and special effects wizardry.

Douglas Crise: I’ll be a little bit more open because you know Alejandro didn’t want a lot of the magic given away but there’s been several articles contradicting coming out in Hollywood Reporter. One says there’s 15 minute take in the movie one says there’s this one says there’s that edits can be done surprisingly places you never thought of before. I mean we had the planned ones where you know there’d be a dark alley or a whip pan or the pans aren’t even – you can do a an edit when the camera’s not even panning fast because you just start wiping the frame and you find an edge or whatever. And that’s where a lot were done. But I mean there’s rotos that we did in different things like that like one of I’m probably the most proud of is one I came up with because like I said he wanted this performance and he wanted this performance and there was where are – we going to put it? And it’s a scene where Michael Keaton is on stage performing for the audience and the cameras coming around him. And Ed Norton’s getting drunk in the background.

— I’m drunk Yes I’m drunk I’m supposed to be drunk. This is Carver He left a piece of his liver on the table every time he wrote a f*****g page. If I need to be… —

Douglas Crise: We roto’d around Michael Keaton and it’s almost like a 40 second edit happening because we’re changing the background to a different performance of Ed Norton. So then once Michael finishes he steps out of frame and we’ve wiped completely across. So there’s an edit there that wasn’t planned. What it was is basically split screen is the easiest way to describe it because it starts on Michael but you know as he’s talking I did it in the avid first where I just did an animat around him and we figured out we could do it because we thought oh we could do the cut. Later when there’s a whip pan but that wasn’t going to work because then we wouldn’t get the moment we want to with Ed. You know there’s so many things you can do with the visual effects once you’ve figured out it’s possible. I mean there’s ones we all came up with when Michael Keaton shoots himself and he falls out of frame we switched the audience because the gun goes off his arm wipes the frame and he falls because Michael Keaton’s best performance was his last one but the audience had been there all night, they’re tired they’re not professionals their best performance was take four not not you know, and that’s the best audience he wanted. So when he falls out of frame there’s a cut there. You know there’s 100 cuts in the film. There was no 15 minute takes the longest takes every the standard day of shooting was it would be a set up of like three to four minutes long. And that’s how long that takes were and the longest take I think they ever shot was close to five minutes. And probably the longest take in the movie’s five minutes. But most of them are way shorter and there’s cuts in within those even in those four minute takes we’d put two or three edits that we didn’t plan on having. I mean there were like I said they had the planned spots and we did a lot of other stuff like you know on every film you do speed ramps and you do dialogue replacement people’s mouths. You do all kinds of stuff but here you had to really work it because you couldn’t play anybody’s over the shoulder too much. And you know if you wanted to find you know someone flubbed a line a little bit you had to sneak the word in their mouth or we would ramp the speed up to get the pacing a little faster. There’s one scene I won’t give it away but there’s a scene that you know it was one of the scenes we feel where the movie slowed down a lot. And I was ramping the speed up between every line of dialogue. So when somebody wasn’t talking we’d ramp it 30 percent faster and then bring it back down and still probably run their dialogue 5 percent faster. So we would be running ramps up and down. I never did so many speed ramps in a movie. And sometimes we actually slowed down. sometimes we actually wanted the moment to last a little longer. And what was I think ingenious about Alejandro is he knew to build in some of these moments in the film where. OK. We’re going to take a break here. You know it’s like one of my favorite scenes that I didn’t understand when he shot it was the corridor. And that of course we had the mobility of once and there’s actually a cut when the cameras panning over to the empty hallway. It’s actually wiping and you didn’t see it. But anyway you know we I think we slowed that footage down so it even plays slower because he knew we could go faster or slower with it until he wanted Michael to step in. And you know and I think we’re even digitally zooming in a little bit before the camera actually starts to zoom.

Eric: One of the editors many challenges is dealing with the sometimes tricky landscape of the film’s final cut and potentially then having too many cooks in their kitchen. But Douglas Crise never loses sight of who’s the head chef.

Douglas Crise: I think this is probably true for most editors and I hope it is. I definitely took this from Steven is when I’m working on a movie. I work for the director for anybody else. Nobody else tells me what to do or what to change or how they want it. We’ll have producers in the room when when the producer is allowed to come in and they’ll give their notes and their notes. They don’t give me notes separately their notes go to the director and director gives me the notes and they fight it out. They fight out the politics and if they’re arguing about things I’ll usually agree now when I say work for my director I will agree with my director if I agree with him if I don’t I will say I will take the producer’s side if I agree with the producer on something. But I I try to stay out of that political nonsense that will happen. And those choices that are made I would say as a director you should get final cut as quickly as you can in your career and you hold on to it and never give it up. I mean harmony when he was shooting Spring Breakers the producers came to him and said they wanted they want to have final cut. And he says you know give me ten million dollars right now. You’re not getting it. That’s that’s his standpoint and he’s had final cut from the day he started and he won’t ever give it up. And Soderbergh has final edit or if you’re going to hopefully align yourself with a producer who is strong and someone you trust immensely they might have final cut over you on your first couple movies but they’ll have your back and you know and I know George Clooney’s first movie he didn’t have final cut but Soderbergh did and Soderbergh was a producer on it. So they are as tight as they get those two guys. So that’s the way you start out before you get your final edit.

Eric: For Michael and Claudia on Creed. The path to the film’s final cut was made even more complicated since one of the producers was Rocky Balboa himself.

Claudia Castello: We had to fight until the last minute because the studio wanted Adonis to win and we strongly believed that he had to lose because he’ll win something much more than that which was the humanity which was more important than him being a winner you know. And then we had discussions Stallone was a big help for us because he had a lot of weight on that movie. He’s responsible for the whole series and that was one point that he actually went to the other side and we were like, “oh we’re done. Oh my god.”

Michael P. Shawver: He came in and he was like, “we’re going to do this we’re going to do this we have no time we have no time we’re doing it.” And Ryan was out of the room and I’m just sitting.

Claudia Castello: He was sitting on the –

Michael P. Shawver: Claudia gets up and leaves.

Claudia Castello: I look at him like I’m going to the bathroom.

Michael P. Shawver: And I’m sitting there and he was like. And then he goes he goes, “where’s Ryan? I don’t say this twice.” And I’m like, “I don’t know,” and I like slow turn around and then Ryan came in and kind of talked him down a little bit.

Claudia Castello: And he totally changed.

Michael P. Shawver: Yeah well the thing about Sly is that he listens and he listens to us. He didn’t have to listen to us he can come in and. Do this do that change this. But you know he respected Ryan so much because at the beginning Ryan said. Look I know you’re a director. I know you’re a producer just let me direct like you’re a great actor. Do what you do. Let me worry about everything else but he would come in. And he he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life and would come in with very specific notes and but also like this timecode on this scene this tape this frame like “I really like the delivery here I really like this reaction here,” and he would come with all that stuff and I’ve never seen a producer do that let alone one of the biggest icons in the history of movies.

Claudia Castello: And good notes like he was not a crazy producer.

Michael P. Shawver: Yeah because a lot of other producers are like well you know we don’t think the character would really do that and the story whatever a lot of producers would be like, “I don’t care do it. Cause I said so,” he would actually stop and think and if he agreed with us and a lot of times he did he would say you know, “yeah you’re right. Let’s keep this and move on.

Claudia Castello: Yeah he cared. He really cared and he knew what he was doing. He was not doing that for ego because sometimes you see some producers that come with the money but they have no idea what they’re talking about. But they have to have their print.

Michael P. Shawver: So they inject they inject.

Claudia Castello: Yeah they force you to do things that are not good for the project. And it’s really hard to deal with them because yeah we were very passionate.

Michael P. Shawver: Half of editing is politics anyway you know.

Claudia Castello: And then you have to deal with that situation as best as you can and it doesn’t always turn out for the best of the project. And then you remember it’s just a movie. Yeah. And you move on.

Eric: Maybe the most magical thing about editing is how much hard work goes into a part of cinema. You tend not to notice but editors are the first ones who transform what could be a mountain of footage into a cohesive story. And they provide the last rewrite the screenplay if you want to learn more about the invisible art of editing. Walter Murch’s book, In the Blink of an Eye is like an editor’s Bible. And Wendy Apple’s documentary, The Cutting Edge shows the many amazing tricks editors have up their sleeves. We want to thank Douglas Crise, Claudia Castello, and Michael P Shawver for speaking with our students. And thanks to all of you for listening. This episode was based on two Q&As. Douglas Crise was moderated and produced by Tova Laiter. Claudia Costello and Michael P Shawver were moderated by Kelly Gardner and Josh Eiserike. To watch these interviews or to see our other Q&A’s check out our YouTube channel. That’s YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me, Eric Conner. Edited and mixed by Kristian Hayden. Our creative director David Andrew Nelson who also produced this episode with Kristian Hayden and myself. Executive produced by Tova Laiter, Jean Sherlock, and Dan Mackler. A special thanks to our events department, Sajja Johnson, and the staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time.

This projector at the end it’s I just don’t think it’s very accurate. I mean it’s an audio broadcast on a digital medium involving no film. I have an idea. Why don’t we put in there an air siren from World War II because it’s just as relevant or the sound of a frickin dinosaur.

Writer J. Michael Straczynski

In this podcast episode, New York Film Academy sits down with writer, J. Michael Straczynski. Join us as J. Michael Straczynski discusses his experiences writing for Thor, Spider-man, and Superman on the big screen as well as the groundbreaking Netflix series Sense8.

Eric: Hi! I’m Eric Conner senior instructor at New York Film Academy. And in this episode, we bring you writer J. Michael Straczynski.

J. Michael Straczynski: I write 10-12 hours a day every day except New Year’s Day, my birthday, and Christmas Day.

Eric: He’s such a prolific talent. His work spans pretty much every form of media there is: film, TV, comic books, novels. He’s even branching into web series. Mr. Straczynski created the beloved syfy show Babylon 5 as well as Sense8 for Netflix and the comic books. He reinvented Spider-Man Thor and Superman amongst many many others and on the big screen, he wrote Clint Eastwood’s the Changeling and he helped adapt World War Z.

— I am Thor Odinson.

The Old ways are done You’d stand giving speeches while Asgard falls.

What worries me is that you have stopped looking for my son.

Why would we be looking for someone we’ve already found?

You are an old man and a fool.

Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal all alone in the night.

You’re a liar and a troublemaker and if you ask me you’ve got no business walking the streets of Los Angeles.

This drink I like it. – I know it’s great right? – Another! —

Eric: He’s done all this despite admitting to almost sabotaging his own career multiple times.

Tova Laiter: How did you start in the business?

J. Michael Straczynski: I’ve actually started numerous times that I have a tendency to firebomb my own career on a regular basis. I think it’s important to do that from time to time. I started off as a – writing plays that were produced locally when I was 17 years old. I always knew I was going to be a writer and began preparing from the moment I could actually read a book like age four or five. So my first four years were wasted but after that I began preparing to become a writer. I knew just coming into it. And the thing about it is I come from ridiculously poor roots no connections to the business at all. We moved my first 17 years 21 times. Because my father had a unique economic philosophy blow into town run up a lot of bills and split. So we’d be in a different city. You know guys would show up at the door with badges and bills and that night the U-Haul backs up and we go somewhere else New Jersey to Illinois to Texas to California. And guys who were in my neighborhood the guys who I grew up with were never expected to do anything and we were considered dead-enders. Either you’d end up working in a mechanics shop when you got older or you end up in jail. Those are your options. So when I said I want to be a writer they all kind of laughed you know, as would I have done. But after studying and studying and studying when I was 17 the engine turned over in my head. What had happened was I was I had gotten most of what writing involved but voice and style the difference between voice and style was eluding me and I couldn’t figure out what the distinction was. I was reading a book by H.P. Lovecraft whose style is way over the top and it was so big that I understood something of what that was. I realized that voice is who you are and style is the clothes you wear so you could adopt a different style but your voice within that style’s always the same. And when I realized how that worked the engine of my head turned over and suddenly I that day I wrote two short stories couple of poems The next day I wrote two more short stories and began having them sold locally as little articles for magazines and newspapers and began working in plays and getting those produced and was a reporter about 10 years I actually did pretty well at that and ended up going from L.A. Times to L.A. reader to time Incorporated which is what got me out of journalism it’s a whole different story a different time. But I left that firebombed my career in reporting went into television animation where I worked on shows like pardon the expression he man the masters of the universe. She-ra Real Ghostbusters and others and then. And then firebombed my career in animation went from there to live action and was on that up through Jeremiah for Showtime which was a hideous experience then I firebombed my career in television. I went from there to films and did that now I circled back to television again so I failed upward is the answer to the question. Embrace your inner failure.

Eric: The seeds for Mr. Straczinski’s comic book work started years back as an unhappy child who found solace and connection in the pages of Superman. And as he explains he might have even received some of Superman’s bravery.

J. Michael Straczynski: I grew up being the geek of the schools that I went to. But for me in all the comics I read as a kid. Superman was kind of it for me because coming from a background of poor and no opportunities and the horrific family Superman could do anything he could fly and he could you know. And nothing could hurt him. And I learned my ethics from comic books and Superman in particular. So for me it became not just a fun thing to read it became a survival mechanism. A few years ago I was at a comic book convention in Chicago and you ever been to comic cons like the big ones like San Diego or whatever else the dealer’s rooms are like you know from here to New Jersey. They just really really long. And the guys selling at booths art work and tchotchkes and expensive stuff and cheap stuff and just general garden variety crap and I’m in this row of booths in Chicago dealers room the convention. I hear someone yell stop him and I looked down the row. And then there’s a guy like in his 20s who just grabbed a bunch of expensive artwork like tens of thousands of dollars worth of art. And was making a run for it and the crowd like the Red Sea they parted you know and I brought him down tackled him like a gazelle brought him down. The guy who caught up with me who’s booth it was we held him for the cops to show up and afterward they’re taking him away and the guy who runs the convention Mike walks up and says. Why did you do that. You could have been seriously hurt. I took him back to where I’d been standing under a ten foot tall cutout of Superman. I said How could I stand in front of that and do nothing. And Spider-Man would be even better given the mythology of that but it was Superman.

Eric: Mr. Straczynski doesn’t shy away from potentially alienating hardcore comic fans for the sake of an original emotion based tale. He boldly gave Thor a makeover by bringing the Norse god and his entire kingdom of Asgard to the fantastical world of Oklahoma now if this sounds familiar it’s because he also helped write the first Thor movie.

J. Michael Straczynski: I had been writing for Marvel Comics for a while and wanted to bring back Thor who had been gone for a few years and nobody wanted to get near the character. They offered it to Neil Gaiman he ran like hell they offered it to Mark Mallar. He ran like hell and I wanted it. I want to give it I want it and so alright give it to Joe. And the problem was that no one knew what to do with the character because he doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else. He comes from this tradition a very faux Shakespearean dialogue.

— You have no idea what you are dealing with.

Shakespeare in the park doth mother know you weareth her drapes? —

J. Michael Straczynski: And what do you do with Asgard and so they give it to me and say what you want to do. I said first off main thing is I want to move Asgard to Oklahoma. And they looked at me as if I had three heads and feathers which I was wearing that day but that’s a different story. And they said why. And I said Iron Man next to Thor. Not much of a power difference. Thor next an ordinary person makes him more godlike but also makes him more human. Plus visually it’s really cool to go to Oklahoma to the flatlands it’s like flat flat flat Asgard flat and I’m all about contrasts and so they said. None of them wanted it anyway. Sure go out and have fun. We’ll see you on the way down on the Titanic. So I did it and really focused strongly on the characters I reimagined How Thor spoke I made it more not Shakespearean. But formalized you think who it is not for burning. Christopher Fry that sort of thing and more accessible to a modern audience was still formalized and created relationships with the local townsfolk and often in very funny ways. I mean they want to send him some letters and there’s no address for Asgard so you have one of the folks from the town comes out with a mailbox you know by Asgard one Asgard road you know and the cops tell them you can’t just put Asgard in the middle of this on this land. So with the incantation he raised it for at above the ground. It’s not on the ground anymore it’s 4 feet above the ground just to mess with them and what to their surprise happened was that the book became one of the top five sellers for Marvel and stayed that way for the entire time that I worked on it. There wasn’t a lot of action in it. There wasn’t a lot of big huge events. It was just a strong character story and people reacted to that. And they responded to it. That’s what makes the character work because of those small moments. One of the things I did in the book was as Asgard is now by this small Oklahoma town. We see how they interact and at one point the Town Council asked do you have indoor plumbing and they said no we throw it over the wall. But my favorite scene there is a guy who’s a chef cook in a diner who begins falling in love with this Asgardian woman who is a goddess and she likes him a lot also and he keeps thinking how is this ever going to work. And he’s in the diner and Donald Blake was the alter for Thor is there. He’s lamenting this and his dad used to say to him you know a fish can love a bird but where would they build a house together. And Don Don says by the edge of the river. Ah and that’s when the guy decides to pursue it. And that set the template for the movie. They wanted to put that setting into a small town. The outfit that he wears here is based on the outfit I and the artist came together and put together. So they said we want you to be involved with the film. I had a outstanding obligation to another film so I said I could do the outline for you but I can’t do the entire script so I came onboard did the outline for them and they proceeded to go off from there. And of course the great irony is that Ken Ken Branagh who directed this wanted me to do a cameo in this really bad idea. So I show up just to be one of a bunch of guys in line. And he said I want you to actually act in the scene. No you don’t trust me you don’t He said I want you to. So there’s a scene where a red truck after the hammer’s been thrown out of Asgard it craters in the ground a red truck drives up and a guy gets out and tries to pick it up and yeah I said you know despite all evidence to the contrary Ken decided that I could act. So there you are.

Eric: The fans’ reaction to Thor pales in comparison to how they responded to what he did to Spider-Man during the storyline one more day. Mr. Straczynski not only broke up Peter and Mary-Jane he erased their marriage and their entire backstory from existence. That one still hurts. But like with all his work he used the fictional web slinger as a response to what’s happening in the real world.

J. Michael Straczynski: The difference between creating your own characters and working for in-house established like Thor Superman whoever else is that when you’re writing your own characters you can go as far as you want to go. You can make them terrible people you can have terrible things happen to them. I did Spider-Man for seven years and during that time you know that you go from here to there but you really can’t go much further because you will you know break the equipment and they hand you these characters as a trust they think you’ll serve the character well don’t hurt it. You know. So you really do have I wouldn’t say mittens on. But certainly the fingerless gloves you know just partial mittens and you also realize that you have a much larger responsibility with that character because they’re a known icon. So for instance I was writing Spider-Man when 9/11 hit and Marvel called me up and said we need to respond to this and Peter Parker is the obvious choice because he lives there he’s a New Yorker it’s how we identify him. We need you to write an issue that somehow addresses 9/11. Swell you know. And for days I kept trying and I’d call them and said I know the words are in the dictionary somewhere but what order to put them in and which ones to use is eluding me they said well give it one more day and think about it some more. And we were shooting Jeremiah TV series for Showtime in Vancouver and I was in the producer’s trailer on location and I had this note pad in front of me and I wrote down. There are no words and another sentence unfurled itself to me. And in 45 minutes this prose poem meditation. A style I’ve never written before emerged that I can’t even take credit for. And I sent it off exactly as written to Marvel and Axel Alonzo was the editor at The Marvel closed his door and read it and was in tears for the right reasons for a change. And when that book came out the New York Times covered it and firemen shared it at fire stations. It was used in schools as a teaching device about 9/11. And I got letters from guys who were there and firemen who were there who said what your book captured was the emotion of that moment. He said people understand that what we needed the most as we were working in the ruins was shoes because the heat from below was so strong that our soles kept melting. I thought what a metaphor that is. You know and when you have a character like Spider-Man you can address those kinds of important things because he is an icon. Whereas your individual characters that are not going to be as well known probably can’t do that.

Eric: His writing on the Superman comic was equally as bold making Clark Kent more human in an attempt to relate to the majority of us who just can’t solve our problems with superpowers.

Tova Laiter: How is your approach towards Earth one? Superman?

J. Michael Straczynski: Comes from a number of different things but probably the seminal image that guided me in that book the first one in particular it was on the New York Times bestsellers for like half a year. Again this happened while I was still working up in Vancouver on Jeremiah and every Wednesday I would go down to my comics sticks downtown anybody been to Vancouver anybody know Vancouver at all. There is a street called Granville which is where folks of your tribe know guys and gals in their 20s tend to congregate. You know and younger you know 15 18. It’s that age 15 to 20 and you see them sitting on the curbs. They’re panhandling asking for money. Hanging out drinking. My favorite guy there had this sign he had held in front of them said you know need money for weed. I thought that was really honest of him. And when I went to get my copy books. What I discovered was every once in a while one of those guys would come into the comic book store and walk down the row of garishly colored books his eyes hungry for something he could relate to. And he got to the end that you saw the light in his eyes go out and he would go to leave and I would follow him out and said what happened just now what’s going on and he said there’s nothing there that is like the world I live in you know. And when time came to do Superman I thought let me create a character for that tribe who don’t know where they fit in. Don’t know where they’re going. Clark Kent early 20s fresh out of college come into metropolis what does he want to do with his life. Not sure he wants to be Superman so he can do anything he wanted to do and be found profoundly successful at it. But he has to figure that process out. Let’s focus on that and that became a large part of it. I’ve introduced a character to a second volume who is next door neighbor who works as an escort. And people were at first you know horrified by the fact that Superman that Clark Kent was friends with a hooker and he wasn’t trying to get her out of the life. He knew she wanted to get out. That wasn’t an issue question is do I respect you for who you are while you’re trying to do this you know. And they became really good friends. And there were a lot folks were up in arms about that. But in the third book we make that work pretty well. So I try to look at this from a different point of view and addressing the concerns of economics of direction of sexuality things that you can just not hit too hard because you’re still writing for a certain audience but enough to make it a fresher approach to the character. But it all started with the image of this guy in a hoodie which is the Superman in the first issue first book book wearing the hoodie which also freaked everybody out. Walk into that store and not seeing somebody he could relate to and filling what that need was.

Eric: Mr. Straczynski has been a TV writer for over 30 years from He man to the reboot of Twilight Zone to Walker Texas Ranger starring the one and only Chuck Norris but his work as a creator and executive producer of the sci fi series Babylon 5 truly showed his mettle as he wound up writing almost every episode of the show. No small feat particularly for a program that had over 100 episodes.

J. Michael Straczynski: Babylon 5 was really kind of a one man show to its large extent for the first two years we had freelance writers for half of it. Then it got so convoluted that I had to do all the writing myself because I couldn’t separate it out by saying this episode ends here and that one begins here. There’s your assignment. It was the first series to do a five year arc we were the first ones to do that. And because I needed to figure it out as I did it it was hard to assign episodes so I ended up writing out of 110 episodes 92 as well as showrunning the darn thing so I was kind of a one man show. Whereas Sense8 was the three of us sitting in a room and just chewing through all the details and all the background of where these characters come from. Who are they. And we ended up covering the walls with these boards a metallic magnetized boards that had three by five cards on them with it going this way with who the characters were then the backgrounds who they were where they came from fathers parents. And this way across was their individual arcs. And we did over a period of like a couple of months we finally worked this thing out that everything laid out day by day and time by time what the whole thing was. And I’m looking at this construction one day and I went oh crap. And Lana said What I said time zones. Because they’re all connected telepathically. And if one of our characters in San Francisco is in trouble the character who is in Seoul can’t help them because they’re asleep. So we now have to redo the entire thing to incorporate time zones and they kind of hated me from that point on for you know for obvious reasons. And there was a lot more travel involved in doing doing sense8. We went to we shot the show on location. As opposed to if that was all done onstage in San Francisco Chicago London Mexico City Berlin Iceland Mumbai Nairobi and Seoul. No stage work at all. It was it was quite an experience so it was pretty much as different as you can get from each other on every possible level.

Eric: Mr. Straczynski’s current Netflix shows Sense8 is a collaboration with the Wachowskis the innovators behind the Matrix trilogy. Despite the show’s massive scope and globetrotting locations the show spawned from an intimate and emotional central theme.

J. Michael Straczynski: We worked on what the story was going to be and what the first three episodes on spec took it out and our first meeting was at Netflix and figured okay fine that went well lets book the next meeting and they called to take it off the market and said we’re going to give you the budget to make the show. Do you all know what the concept the premise of sense8 what the idea is Lana and I particularly are big believers in the notion of community. The problem we have as a culture right now is that we have been marginalized and tribalized and factionalized to within an inch of our lives. If the country were divided geographically as it is politically right now you’d be hearing gunfire in the distance. And we wanted to talk about the fact that whatever your gender identity is or your sexuality or your ethnic background that the common coin of our shared humanity is stronger than all of it stronger than what divides us. And we wanted to do a story on a global scale that was about community and one of things that entered into discussion was I have friends three dubious words but I do have friends who will when they’re in different parts of the world they’ll all queue up a DVD at the same time of a movie and as the movie plays they will text back and forth with each other about what they’re seeing and they’re sharing that experience even though they’re in different parts of the world. So I said what about you know characters who become telepathically linked to each other and suddenly there’s someone in your head who knows everything that you know about yourself and only you can see them but no one else can. And that person knows your secrets your background your skills your abilities and theres eight characters who share this hive mind and to me as a writer what’s appealing about that is I have a theory that there are five kinds of truth the truth you tell the casual strangers the people you meet the truth you tell to your friends and to your family. The truth you tell to only a few people in your entire life. The truth you tell to yourself the truth you won’t even admit to yourself. And we wanted to do a story about truth number five because suddenly someone’s in your head and has access to your secrets and our secrets are what define us. In many respects so that became the core of it. And then we built out the universe from there.

Eric:Despite years of success in television. When he went out with his feature screenplay Changeling he was considered a newer writer. Fortunately he won over two titans of the industry which ensured the true story would reach the big screen.

J. Michael Straczynski: Ron Howard bought the script to direct initially for himself. He couldn’t do it brought in Clint and how the town works is that the director comes on they give you notes and you come back with a draft. So they finally said Clint wants to meet you so I went down to his office at Warner Brother on the lot and comes in we’re sitting on the couch and the funny thing is Clint doesn’t really look at you a whole lot. So we’re sitting like this he’s looking that way the entire time I’m talking to him he’s talking to me and finally we’re done with the meeting. I say you know do you want any revisions because obviously he has some thoughts that I can change a few things and suddenly he looks at me and it’s Clint Eastwood And you remember what your colon is there for and he says you know how many movies I’ve made a lot. A lot. That’s I thought point is he said. I’ve got more phone calls about this script than any other script I’ve ever produced saying Don’t screw it up. My job is to not screw it up. Don’t change a word. The ultimate irony of Changeling was that we went to Cannes and we missed winning the Palme d’Or by one vote. We discovered from a French critic who didn’t believe the story was true he said police would not handle someone in this fashion. Obviously not from here. And Clint called me because then the story had based on a true story in the credit and and he said half of what he said was unrepeatable. But what the gist of it was. Sit down with the universal attorneys go through all your notes with them. Show them where every single scene of the script comes from to get a true story not based on a true story. On the screen from now on. So I sat down with universal attorneys and I had done a year’s worth plus of research. I had like 25 hundred pages of documentation about that story and I show them every single case where every single line came from a transcript or a hearing document or a court record or a hospital record. And we got a true story which is very rarely ever been awarded to anyone. He’s still pissed off about it.

Eric: After working as a writer for over 20 years the changing turned Mr. Straczynski into a Hollywood big shot a role he was less than thrilled to portray.

J. Michael Straczynski: After being in television for 15 years I wrote Changeling which got all of this attention and suddenly I was invited to all these studio meetings and most of them didn’t know that I had been in television before they thought this is my first script and again this up and coming screenwriter. So I’m at this reception with like eight guys in their 20s and me the best part of it was after Changeling became Changeling. I ended up going to all the different studios they all want to meet me and see who this Yeti was who had just done this. And I walk into this studio visualize if you will a long conference table and along the sides of the conference table. There’s the presidents vice presidents of production development. Yes Men flunkeys plenipotentiaries toadies the whole catastrophe and at the end of the table is Mr. Big who runs the studio and he begins giving me his background I ran Paramount for two years. I was in charge of Fox for three years I was head of production for this studio for two years. I ran this studio for three years. Give me the whole litany and then sat back to see my reaction. I said what you’re saying is you can’t hold a job and the president vice president of production the development people the flunkeys the yes men the toadies went white Mr. Big took a moment to realize what I just said and started laughing. And could not stop laughing because most people who walked into that room did so from a position of fear. The most important thing you can do as writers is never ever ever be afraid. There’s nothing they can do to you. And because I was not afraid of him he respected me and actually I walked out the door with an assignment. So never ever ever ever let him see you being afraid.

Eric: Before they work together on Sense8 J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis were mutual fans of each other. This led to perhaps his hardest gig ever doing a page one rewrite of a feature film in one week for all your non-writers out there. That is literally impossible.

J. Michael Straczynski: They actually were fans of mine. They were Babylon 5 fans and like my comics work. I didn’t know that till I got the invitation to see the last Matrix movie at the Disney center downtown. And I didn’t. My lawyer said we got this invitation do you know anybody involved with matrix I said No but I’m happy to go I love the movies. So I go up to the Disney theater and up the balcony and this couple sits next to me and the woman says What did you do with this. I said nothing. I’m just here to see the movie and this is who I am. She leaned over said Lana it’s the Babylon 5 guy and Lana came over and began talking Spider-Man and Babylon 5 and all the stuff and they were trying to run the movie and they’re like we’re talking Babylon 5 and comic books and so we became friends after that and we worked a few years later together on Ninja Assassin which not a terribly deep movie because it’s well Ninja Assassin. But what’s funny about that is this is kind of again where the effortless approach to writing pays off. I didn’t know they were working on Ninja Assassin until I got a phone call from Lana saying we’re in a bind. Can you come see us this is on a Monday. I come the next day on Tuesday and they said we are six weeks from camera on this movie and the script doesn’t work. We need to have a complete rewrite fade into fade out. Can you do it for us. I said you’re my friends whatever you want me to do I’m happy to do it. When do you have to have it. They said it has to go out to actors’ agents on Friday. This is Tuesday. So they said we know how fast you are. Can you can you pull this off. And I said I’ll have it on Friday. Went home. Fired up the coffee maker. I did the math. How many pages per hour that would have to be and how many hours I could sleep each day which is three. And I just made sure that every hour I hit that number and I didn’t go to sleep until I hit that page count for the day. And would doze at the desk I would put my pillow on the keyboard and nap get up have a cup of coffee. Keep on going. And on Friday morning I emailed off the script which Warners had no notes on which scared the hell out of me. Because if Warner would have like something you’ve got to worry so then they shot it

Eric: Mr. Straczynski gave our students some great advice about writing for one read a lot of screenplays or TV scripts. The good news there. So many of them are available online legally. So you literally have no excuse for not reading them.

J. Michael Straczynski: The best thing you can do seriously is to read scripts read because when you’re watching the film what works is often invisible but you can see it on the page but you can’t always see it on the screen and particularly look at I wouldn’t say read the scripts for but look at really really bad films because what works in a good film is often invisible. But what is crappy in a bad film is pretty obvious sometimes and you can learn more from seeing a bad film sometimes than a good film because like the magician how the hell I can see what they did wrong over there and just write every day. What you have to become is transparent as a writer and write all the crap out of your system. It’s like writing is like digging for oil you have to pump out the mud the yuck the dinosaur bones the water and then you get to the good stuff. The more you write whatever it is that you’re writing do it because what you want to get down to is your authentic voice. Writing is nothing more than talking on the page in your own natural voice. When you hang out with the writers a lot you learn that they write the way they talk and talk the way they write. There is this notion. Somehow writing should sound literary and sound a certain way. No writing is your natural voice. What you have to sell what all of you have to sell each of you stands on a piece of turf piece of ground that no one else stands on. No one else has your background your experience your knowledge your information no one else has that lens in the middle of your head that was formed by your experiences. If a diamond has value because there are few of them how much more rare and valuable is your particular perspective when you hire a writer you’re hiring them for their point of view. You’re hiring them for how they see the world and how that story will come through that filter. As a result you can give 10 writers the same basic idea you’ll get 10 very different stories. So whatever you can do to write just your brains out nonstop to get out of your own way and become transparent which only can happen by every day. Writing writing writing writing writing. I started writing nonstop when I was 17 years old. I’ve never stopped every day and the first three or four years my stuff sucked. It wasn’t the smell it was the burning of the eyes. It was that bad. And eventually I wrote out the crap and got to the good stuff. I’m still writing out some crap in my system there’s still some left over there. To this day I’m still working on it but the more you can get those words out of your system and learn to just be transparent and just here’s what it is there’s trying to write and there’s writing effortless joyful fun that’s where you have to get no matter what material he approaches be it thor a ninja assassin or the changeling’s harrowing tale of a mother losing her son. Mr. Straczynski comes at the story from the exact same place to me writing it’s all about emotion. That’s ultimately what it comes down to I don’t care how good your plot is or your effects or your action sequences if you don’t care about the characters you have got nothing. People may not remember you know all the whaling technology that was discussed in Moby Dick but you rember Ahab. For me it all starts and ends with character and my writing process is built around that in a kind of a weird way that you want the secret to write the real the real deal. Don’t tell anyone I told you this it’s you know imagine your best friend for a second if they haven’t got a best friend borrow one from the person next to you walking across the living room at night lights are off and they bang their shin on the coffee table. Now you know your friend. You know exactly what your friends gonna say when that happens. You didn’t have to work at it. Have to think about it. You just know and you can write it down. Writing is exactly the same. It is getting to know the characters so well that whatever you drop them into you lay back and you write down what they do. It’s very zenlike that way. It’s not supposed to be homework it’s not supposed to be hard it’s supposed to be fun. And by focusing on the characters. Let them do the work for you. It becomes effortless and keeps the character always at the center of the story. I worked with Jim Cameron awhile back working on a Forbidden Planet remake and he said one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard. He said he used to think that writing science fiction was about writing familiar characters in unfamiliar settings. It took me ten years to realize I was wrong. It’s about familiar relationships in unfamiliar settings. So. Terminator 2 is a father son relationship even though it’s not aliens is a mother daughter story even though it’s not. You may not be able to buy into you know alien civilizations or strange futuristic events but the emotion of what a father son or mother daughter relationship is will bring you in every time. So I always believe in going through the emotions first and foremost as the gateway drug and pulling back from there into what the plot is another piece of advice from J Michael Straczynski. Learn how to take feedback without letting your ego get in the way of ideas that can help develop the material.

You have to be honest. You have to step outside your own ego and say does the note make sense. If it does do it there’s nothing wrong with doing it. You get to bask in the reflected glow of the smartness of that note. If the note is wrong because your heart says it is wrong because your logic says it is wrong you don’t do it and you tell them that or you lie. I used to do this. Here’s how I wouldn’t say not bright but less in tune. Sometimes executives are at studios where the example would be someone says to you okay in your script. We have them coming in the door I think they should come in the window because that’s more dramatic. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Fine. You wait 6 weeks turn in the script and you tell them you know that note you had where instead of having them come in the window you have them come in the door. You were absolutely right with that. It works every time. They just want to be heard. They just want to earn their salary. And lying is a completely moral point of view when you’re working with some of these guys. But other times if you disagree with it and your heart says this is wrong you have to fight. You have to be a pain in the ass I cultivated that from a very early age to just say no if I thought it was wrong. But just be honest with yourself. Oftentimes it’s getting more to the spirit of the note and the heart than the actual letter of the note. Something in you was bothering and this is bothering you. You’re saying cut this sequence. Well are you actually saying that the sequence is too long because if that’s actually the concern I can take out this part over here which is not essential. Opposed to the point you want to take out which is the whole core of the scene. Yeah and lastly don’t worry about what the audience will think belief in your material is what will see you through this industry.

I think that the moment you begin thinking too much about the audience you’re doomed. It has to interest you because we all containe within us as I mentioned before the same basic elements we all want happiness. Love you know better future for our kids If you write something that’s true for you. The odds are it will be true for everybody else. At some level the moment you think what you should be writing about then you lost that and you what you write will be driven by the market driven by outside forces rather than your own heart. And again as I mentioned earlier the only thing you have of value to sell. Is your point of view. The audience changes you can write to a trend right now but that trend started four years ago when the developing process began on those films you’re now four years behind the times. Where as your. Your heart will always be on time. Because your heart’s writing to the culture right now. Yeah. Never. The worst that will happen is it won’t sell write the next one. That’s what a writer does. You write it you put it on the market it sells or doesn’t sell you write the next one and the next one and the next one I know a lot of aspiring writers who work for 10 years on a script. And the problem is you only learn the lesson that one script had to teach you. The more you write the more tools you acquire for your toolbox we all start in the same place with a pair of rusty pliers and a screwdriver that’s all you got. You only make so much with that. The more you write the more scripts you write the more tools you get for your toolbox so you can make more interesting things with that. But that box only opens up with your own heart. The moment you come from the outside of it and say I think I should be writing about this because that’s what the audience wants the box won’t open. So write your heart. The audience if they believe in you will find you Sense8 is that that kind of a show. It’s a show driven not by plot or by gimmick a lot of science fiction show’s about the gimic the gadget the mission the team. It’s about what William Faulkner called the human heart in conflict with itself. It’s the only thing that’s worth writing about in the long run. Only thing worth the sweat and the blood and the grief. And we sat there for days asking ourselves the most intimate questions Lana Wachowski who worked on this project with me is transgendered and one of our characters is transgendered so we get into some into the tall grass in some of our conversations. There were times he said Do we really risk going there do we want to go that far with this. Because it’s really intimate stuff. You’ve seen a bunch of it and it works and it has galvanized the Internet in ways that no other Netflix show has ever done. For those of you who don’t know the show we were logging 200 tweets a minute at one point people were just like oh my god look at this show by staying true to the human heart. If you’re going to be a writer what are you selling. Are you selling your point of view or are you selling what you think people want. If it’s the latter. Get the hell out. It was the former stay in

Eric: Mr. Straczynski’s Q&A showed he’s as great a teacher as he is a writer. So thank you to novelist TV writer producer comic book writer publisher and screenwriter J Michael Straczynski. And thanks to all of you for listening. This episode was based on the Q&A moderated and produced by Tova Laiter co-moderated by Crickett Rumley to watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As. Check out our youtube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me Eric Conner edited and mixed by Kristian Hayden our creative director is David Andrew Nelson who also produced this episode with Kristian Hayden and myself executive produced by Tova Laiter Jean Sherlock and Dan Mackler. Special thanks to our events department Sajja Johnson and the staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple’s podcasts or wherever you listen see you next time

No, Kristian. It’s not just a comic book it’s Spider-Man. Mary Jane Peter their marriage was perfect and you know what they did. You know what he did. He ended it and it wasn’t just oh they got divorced. No none of that he erased their marriage and their entire backstory from existence. It doesn’t make sense.