Syd Field, the screenwriting guru, wants to teach you how to pack your suitcase.
Field, who will teach the Screenwriters Summit in Tel Aviv on January 30 and 31
at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, along with fellow screenwriting teachers Linda
Seger, Michael Hauge and John Truby, is happy to explain.
“A screenplay,
when it’s written according to the paradigm [he has developed], is like a
suitcase,” he explained. “It has a three-act structure – a beginning, middle and
end – and that’s the foundation. But how you pack the suitcase, what you put in
it, that’s up to you.”
For aspiring screenwriters everywhere, Field is
something of a legend. The California native, who was called the “most
sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world” by the Hollywood Reporter,
counts some of the most famous writers in Hollywood among his students and
admirers, including Frank Darabont (
The Shawshank Redemption), Tina Fey (30 Rock)
and Judd Apatow (
The 40-Year-Old Virgin).
Field, who has never been to
Israel before, is “incredibly excited” to be visiting the country, and notes
that his grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi, established the first shul in Los
Angeles in 1907. His family also owns what he describes as “an empty lot in
Holon.”
He is enthusiastic about the prospect of the summit here, saying,
“Film has become an international language. People all over the world have
become very sophisticated about that language. Having four acknowledged
screenwriting teachers, with four different, individual points of view, provides
a rich opportunity for someone to drink it all in, to ask their questions or
just listen and take notes.”
Field came to teaching after working in the
entertainment industry for many years. Although he thought about becoming
an actor, he studied in the pre-med track at Berkeley. But after meeting and
studying with master filmmaker Jean Renoir, he switched gears.
Renoir,
the first of Field’s three important mentors, told him, “The future is film,”
and he moved back to Los Angeles, eventually writing more than 100 television
documentaries, including some for Jacques Cousteau. Field also wrote a
number of screenplays himself, several of which were optioned but not produced.
As a single parent, he was under pressure to earn a living and began working for
a production company, where he read and evaluated more than 2,000
screenplays.
“Out of these thousands, I found about 40 good ones. My
question to myself was: What makes these screenplays better than all the
others?” As he pieced together his theory of the cinematic paradigm, he taught a
course at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College and found his
calling.
“I was the student, and the students were the teacher. Those
questions about how to write a good screenplay were the same for everybody,” he
recalls.
“In the 1970s, Los Angeles was a crucible of talent. Marlon
Brando and Paul Newman were teaching courses there in acting and directing....I
had the urge to write again, to utilize what I had learned as a writer and a
teacher.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
WHILE MANY have
claimed to have the secret to writing a good script, Field has been
spectacularly successful at helping writers master the screenplay form. His
books, including
Screenplay,
The Screenwriter’s Workbook, and
The Screenwriter’s
Problem Solver, have sold more than 1,000,000 copies and have been translated
into 19 languages.
In addition to his own study and analysis of what
makes a screenplay work, he credits three master writer/directors with
influencing him. Renoir, at Berkeley was one. Another was the controversial
director Sam Peckinpah, whom Field met through Peckinpah’s niece, and whose
visceral style he admires. It may surprise some of Field’s devotees to learn
that the third was Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, known for his
artistic, impressionistic films, many of which feature little dialogue and
motivations that are hard to figure out.
“I was fascinated by how he
created his language of film without dialogue,” says Field.
Challenged to
analyze Antonioni’s
L’avventura in terms of his cinematic paradigm, Field
instantly describes the film’s three-act structure, with plot points, a midpoint
and so forth.
Getting back to the metaphor of the suitcase, he notes,
“You can pack a film with images or with dialogue, but structure stays the
same.” Talking about recent movies, he points out that James Cameron’s
Avatar
“followed the structure to a T.”
But his method is not only about
screenplay structure but also about the writing process. It was Renoir who gave
him the permission “not to write perfectly. He used to say, ‘Perfection exists
only in the mind, not in reality.’ We all want to be perfect. We all want what
we write to be perfect. But it’s never going to be perfect.
When I ask
people to write 10 shitty pages, it’s so that they are freed from the pressure
of trying to write perfectly. Renoir said he would walk away if ever felt he had
written something perfect.”
Field, who is excited about digital
technology and is working on iPad and iPhone apps for screenwriting, says that
“when a film is good, I’m not aware of the structure. I’m only aware of it when
it’s not working.”
For film students, “this summit is a great
opportunity. But the work will really begin after we leave.”
For more
information and to register, go to the Screenwriters’ Summit Website at
http://screenwriterssummitisrael.com/index.html