This is a transcript of SYS 483 – Filmmaking Lessons From Clerks, Pi and Roger Corman With John Gaspard .
Welcome to Episode 483 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing John Gaspard who is a book author and also a screenwriter. He’s written a number of fiction books, but also has two books that are about screenwriting and filmmaking. The first book is called Fast, Cheap and Under Control. The second book is called Fast, Cheap and Written That Way. This is a book about writing for low budget productions. We talked through his career and dig into his two filmmaking books as well. So, stay tuned for that interview. SYS’s a six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our regular deadline is May 31st. So, if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. We’ve had a good number of options and sales from the contest. And this is only our fourth year. So, we’re getting a nice bit of traction with the scripts. So, lots of production companies that are always looking for high quality, low budget screenplays to produce. We also have a short film category; 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means, submit that as well. I’ve got a number of the industry judges who are looking specifically for short scripts to produce. If you want to submit to the contest or learn more about it, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcasts and they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode number 483. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in five weeks and pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide, it’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks, along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material, really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So now let’s get into the main segment today. I’m interviewing writer John Gaspard. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome, John to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
John Gaspard
I’m excited to talk to you.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can give us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
John Gaspard
Sure, I was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and started making movies at around age 13 with a wind up regular eight film camera that my uncle had given me and made a bunch of shorts in that format and then in super 8 format. And then moved to got into film school in high school, which is sort of weird. There was a program here in the Twin Cities called film in the cities. And for a couple of years while I was in high school, I’d spend the morning doing regular school and get on a bus and go over to St. Paul. And they gave us some great cameras. And we learned animation and shooting and editing. And right after that, when I was a senior in high school, I made a super 8 sound feature film, which they tell me was one of the first single systems of great sound features ever made. Made another one a couple of years later, when I was in college, I switched at that point to shooting on videotape because I had access to a lot of video gear. This was the old pneumatic cassettes. So, this is what news stations were using. We did a couple of features. That way I got out of college, wrote a bunch of screenplays, sold a couple things to TV, and use that money to make to low budget 16-millimeter features, which were done in the late 80s, early 90s And then switched over to digital and that became a thing and made a couple of features in the digital realm one back in beta, Early digital beta video and then with the Canon Rebel camera did a couple other features with that. So, I’ve sort of spent just about every film format. I’ve written for 35-millimeter. I’ve never shot it myself, but I’ve shot 16 In every other kind of format. So, I’ve learned a lot in that process, particularly with the 216-millimeter features how to shoot Something for very little money those reach shot, produced completed for under $30,000 each, wrote a book about how to do that called persistence of vision, which was later retitled digital filmmaking 101. Which wasn’t really true title. And we fought that. But that’s what they called. It wasn’t about digital filmmaking, it was about feature filmmaking. And then what a couple other books, talking to people who’ve made low budget movies, so who’d made higher budget movies, and I’d made but who had some good ideas on how to keep costs down. The first one is called Fast, Cheap and Under Control, lessons learned from the greatest low budget movies of all time. And then the second one is called Fast, Cheap and Written That Way, in which I talk specifically to screenwriters about what were they doing when they knew they were going to be making low budget movie, what did they do at the screenplay level before they got into production.
Ashley
Yep. Perfect. So, let’s touch on some of these eight-millimeter films. I’m just curious. I mean, it sounds like you did full features. What did you do with them at this point? Did you enter in film festivals? And what was your purpose? Did you at this point, you’re in high school and college, did you know I want to be a filmmaker, I want to break up like, what was the purpose of doing these eight-millimeter feature films? And what did you ultimately do with them?
John Gaspard
Sure, I just enjoyed doing it, I was lucky to be running with a pretty talented group of friends, when it came to put people on camera or helping off camera, I enjoy large scale projects are going to take a year or so to do I’m pretty good at hunkering down and doing that. And I enjoy showing them to audiences here in the Twin Cities. At the time, for a super great sound feature. This is like 1976-77, not a lot of film festival opportunities for that. But the second feature I did around 1978, I did spend some time out in LA showing it to a bunch of people and got an agent at that point and showed some critics and kind of met some people. So, it was a nice little calling card. It was an interesting calling card here, somebody who’s done a 90-minute feature with the film you’re watching run through the projector is the same film that ran through the camera, which was always sort of terrifying. But it taught me a lot like learning by doing as opposed to learning by reading about it. And you just learn a whole lot about every step in the process. If not, only are you writing it, but then you have to get up at five in the morning and shoot it. And so, you begin to question why did I write that. And then you get into editing and go, boy, I really didn’t need that. I wish I had learned that earlier. And every one of them has been a learning process. It’s just an ongoing thing that I enjoy doing. I’ve never really set out to make a living at it. I made my living for 30 years working in corporate communications, writing and directing and producing videos for them. It was just something I enjoyed doing with my friends. The Twin Cities has a really deep talent pool when it comes to crews and actors, surprisingly deep. And we just had a great time trying out new gear and new ideas.
Ashley
So, one of the things when this first came across my desk, there’s the filmmaking dictum, you know, fast, good and cheap, you can have two but not three. So, your books are sort of alluding to the fact that maybe you can have three, can you hit this this triumphant of fast, good and cheap?
John Gaspard
Yes. In fact, I found in talking to many filmmakers, that the less money you’re spending on the movie, the better your chances of doing all of that well, because as soon as someone else’s money is coming down the pipeline, you all sudden have to do what they want to some degree or live by their rules. Or, you know, if you’re making a movie for no money, like I’ve done several times, I can get actors to come together for four weekends, shoot a feature, it’s fine. If I’m all of a sudden doing it for $250,000. And I’m paying people and I’m paying for locations and I’m paying for everything. The clock is ticking. And it really is allowed tick. So, if you’re not paying for any of that time really is on your side, and you can take the time you need to get to pre-production, right, which is where people fall down the most. They don’t put enough time into pre-production. And then you can also take the time you want to edit. You’re not trying to get to a festival date. The distributor is not holding a gun to your head saying, you know you got to get this out. Now, I remember when I talked to Steven Soderbergh about sexualizing videotape. He said that of all the films he’d made, and he’d made a lot at that point. That was the only one in which he felt that there wasn’t a gun to his head. He had 30 days to shoot it. He’d written it for 30 days. Every day was a joy. It wasn’t rushed. He said as soon as I made like out of sight, he said I had a gun to my head every single day because all of a sudden, we have millions of dollars involved. So having no money is a huge advantage to not killing yourself and trying to get your will be done.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So just again, I just want to kind of take a step back. And maybe this is sort of obvious, but why should screenwriters be conscious of budget? And I run into a lot of screenwriters that, you know, they go into it because they love Star Wars and Marvel films. So, they’re really looking to write those big epic films. But what do you say to those folks that are trying to break in about that maybe are not necessarily worried about budget?
John Gaspard
Well, I think everybody’s always worried about budget no matter how big budget might be. However, there’s a lot you can do with a lot of money. And if you don’t have a lot of money, and you’ve written a script that has 45 locations, and you have 12 days to shoot it, it’s just making it extra hard on yourself. There’s no point when someone’s producing a movie where someone isn’t going to say you have to cut that because there’s always something you’re going to have to cut. But if you’ve thought about it, and dealt with it at a screenplay level, life is going to be a whole lot easier further down the line. Money is funny. It can get things for you, but can also really make things harder for you. And I compared my situation when I was shooting a $30,000 feature in four weekends. At that point, I had to get all had to get my day every day. And those were, you know, shooting a Friday night, Saturday and Sunday in returning all the gear on Monday. And that was back in the day when you’d rent a 16-millimeter setup and a small light truck. And you got a day rate for having it for the weekend, on Friday, and returned it on Monday. So, the gun is sort of against your head, as opposed to I did a feature a few years ago, called ghost light, which took place entirely at a local theatre here that had a lot of great spaces and a lot of props and costumes and everything. We needed to make a movie about people hanging out in a theater. And that one took maybe a year to do. Because I didn’t have a gun to my head. And when people got busy, we didn’t shoot when people were busy, we did shoot, and I edited as I went along. And you know, after the last day of shooting, you know, two days later, I had a finished product because I’ve been editing as I went along. And there wasn’t that sense. Now some people need that some people need a gun to their head to get it done. I’m not one of those people who needs that I prefer to enjoy the process and not be sweating all the time.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So sound advice for sure. So, let’s talk about some real-world examples that are from your book. One of the first things you break down as a couple of Roger Corman films. I’m amazed as someone who’s been doing this podcast now for a few years, how many people come on the podcasts that have gotten sort of their start with Roger Corman certainly have interacted in some way with Roger Corman and what he’s done over the years. So maybe you can just we can run through some of these films. And you can just give us sort of some of the lessons from these films and from these filmmakers. What are some of the lessons we can take from a guy like Roger Corman?
John Gaspard
Well, Corman is a really interesting mix of left brain and right brain working together in sync, where they they’re really, really balanced. He is an artist. He is a director, but he’s also producer and he understands the mechanics of how to make a movie. He also understands the rules that he needs his filmmakers to follow in order to hit his budget that he’s looking for. But everyone that I talked to who has worked for him said as long as you follow the rules, he gave you tremendous permission to do a lot of really different things. One of my favorite examples is Peter Bogdanovich. The lead Peter Bogdanovich had been sort of in a second unit director for him. And Corman said, you know, I’ve got a because of a contract thing. I got Boris Karloff for three days. Can you come up with something that would use Boris Karloff but that was really all he said. That’s all you need to do. And Bogdanovich and Polly Platt, his wife came back and said, Here’s the idea. Boris Karloff plays a horror film actor who’s wants to retire, he’s getting ready to go to premiere. This is all then intercut with the guy who’s gone and bought a rifle kills his family and is going to start being a sniper at a drive-in movie which happens to be showing the Boris Karloff film. So, he had two parallel stories going, he was able to shoot Karloff actually for more than three days but not a lot more than three days and also incorporate a lot of existing footage from Karloff films that Carmen had produced. So, he got a lot of production value for very little and it was just a great example of Corman said, here’s the rule and by God which was clever enough to work in the rules and still get what he wanted done. Jonathan Demi’s another great example. If you know his career, you’d be surprised that his first feature as a director was a women in prison film called Cage Heat. But that’s the sort of thing corpsman was making. And he said, I want to do this again. But I want to do a little differently. Jonathan Demi has an interesting point of view, he’s produced some things for me, it’s time for him to direct. And he sat him down and said, you know, here’s the rules, you got to get this much shot every day, and you need to come up with this amount of sex violence. But outside of that, do what you want. And Demi said, I’m going to make the best women in prison film ever made. And it’s going to have a sort of a liberal point of view to it. And it’s going to fit everything Corman wants, but it’s also going to reflect who I am as a filmmaker. And not a lot of studios are going to give you that opportunity at that point in your career. But with Corman, you know, as long as you followed the rules in general, you could do what you want it specifically. And if we’re making our own movies, we don’t have a Corman to do that. But one of the things that I learned from that is, you can’t do it alone, you’re going to have to have people help you. And because you’re probably not paying them much or anything, the more you can let them create within that process, the better it’s going to be for them, because they’re going to feel some satisfaction from it. And the better the movie is going to be. Because they’re going to come up with stuff that you wouldn’t have come up with otherwise, if you hadn’t given them permission. I remember talking to Dan O’Bannon, who had directed return to living dead. And he co-wrote alien, an interesting career. And he said that the first time he directed he did it all wrong, because he thought he was supposed to know how to do everything. And the second time he directed he figured it out when oh, I just have to stand up, stay out of their way. And let them do everything because they know what they’re doing and I don’t. And the same is true or even more true in low budget feature, if you’ve got people who know what they’re doing. Be Corman, just say, here’s the general outline of where we’re trying to get within that. What do you want to bring to it?
Ashley
Yeah, yes, sound advice for sure. He must have a real eye for talent too. That’s another thing is he sort of plucked people because he had a vast, you know, group of filmmakers to choose from. And he seems to have picked, you know, plucked a number of filmmakers sort of out of obscurity and given them their first break. So that must have been part of his talent as well as just this eye for talent.
John Gaspard
Well, yes, but he didn’t like pull you off the street. Everybody who worked for him as a director did stuff for him before that in some form, or he was very familiar with what they’re capable of doing. So, it wasn’t like, you can just knock on the door and say, Mr. Corman, I’d like to make a movie. If you’re not going to do that, I’d love to do second unit for you. Or be like Joe Dante and say, I’d love to direct edit trailers for you. And then he goes; Oh, hey, this guy’s good. Yeah, he should do. He let them work at a lower level just to test them. And then he also said something very interesting. He said, the directors who weren’t 100% committed to making the best film they could, regardless of what kind of film it was, the ones who just thought I’ll just phone it in. He said, they dropped by the wayside and you never hear them. You never heard of them, because he said they made one movie, and they went away. It’s the ones who were completely committed to what they were doing, who weren’t winking at the camera. Those are the ones who went on to survive.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let’s talk about some of the other movies. I moved out to LA to be a screenwriter in the 90s. So, a lot of these movies you mentioned the books, the clerks, the swingers pie in the company of man, these were all you know, great movies, as I was kind of getting into the business. Maybe we can get some lessons from them. What are some of the lessons from a movie like Clerks or something even very different, like Pie because Clerks is very contained with location, I would say Pi is a little more opened up. But maybe we can just go through those. What are some of the lessons there?
John Gaspard
Well, they both have tons of lessons. And they’re more similar than different. In the case of Clerks, what Kevin Smith did was a ton of pre-production and a ton of work on the screenplay, so that it would actually fit what he could shoot. And he also realized he didn’t have a lot of film. And so, he rehearsed his actors like crazy. They were very, very well-rehearsed. Some of them aren’t great, but they’re rehearsed. And he also took things that were we’re going to be his problem and he made it the character is probably the biggest example of that being that when Dante comes in the morning, he’s not supposed to be working that day, but he goes to unlock the quick-stop store. Someone is stuck gum in the lock that closes the metal shutters over the windows, so he can’t open the shutters and so yes, put out a big sign saying yes, we’re open. It became his problem. But in fact, it was Kevin’s problem because he was shooting entirely at night, and it was supposed to take place during the day. And he did not have enough money, nearly enough money to shoot big HMI lights through the front windows to give the illusion of daylight outside. So, he made it the characters problem. And if no longer his problem in the big budget world. A great example of that that I always love is when Richard Rush made the stuntman with Peter O’Toole and Steve Railsback. And he was the character within the movie that Peter O’Toole plays is a director shooting a world-war one film, and they shot it down in San Diego at the Coronado hotel. And the location was for Richard Rush perfect. It gave him everything he needed to shoot the movie, except that there were palm trees everywhere. And you can’t shoot a World War One being attacked by the Germans movie with palm trees. And rather than kill himself shooting around them. He just threw in a line where Peter O’Toole looks around and says palm trees, there’s palm trees everywhere. How am I supposed to shoot this World War One movie when there’s palm trees everywhere. And he just took the problem. And he made it the characters problem. Some people call that putting a lantern on it and just saying yes, this is a problem. But it’s not the filmmakers problem. In the case of Pie. I would recommend Aronofsky wrote a pan of a journal of making Pie. And he’s a he’s a bit of a character which comes across very much so in in the Journal. And they made this sort of retro high-tech movie for virtually nothing. And one of the ways they did it was dumpster diving, he needed to have a room full of the what was a supercomputer that his character is making. And he was doing some video work for what he called the evil oil company. And he went to pick up his paycheck and saw that they had a room full of computer gear. And they owed him $500. And he said; what if you keep the $500 you can give me everything in that room. And they said you bet. And he got a pickup truck and grabbed everything and crammed the apartment with it. And that became because he was doing sort of a retro future look, it worked perfectly for him. And he got tons of set dressings for nothing or for minus $100 that he didn’t get. But it was he also took his time getting ready. Really doing pre-production, knowing exactly what he needed so that when they did shoot up, they didn’t wasting time at all. He also did something that not a lot other filmmakers have done no. David Lynch did it with Eraser-head when the movie was done and sold and money started coming in. David Lynch divided all that money and continues to divide all that money up with everyone who worked on it. So, they were getting checks every month for this movie that it took them four years to make. And Aronofsky did the same thing with the cast and crew they pay back investors and then everything else was divided amongst the cast and crew which is you know when it makes money that’s great it’s not something you want to promise because he probably not going to make money but it just shows the respect that he had for everyone who put in all that work and he didn’t just reap the rewards he made sure the reap those same rewards.
Ashley
So, one more movie I’d love to hear your thoughts on in the company of men. This was a movie I remember seeing. It’s a fascinating movie, but it really bucks a lot of like screenwriting 101. I mean, these two guys are utterly unsympathetic. And they’re sort of the protagonist, they’re the ones driving the story. One of the things that I always felt about and I like Neil Le Buet generally like some of his other movies and stuff, but I do I always sort of felt like he got very, very lucky casting Aaron Eckhart and that’s, you know, Aaron Eckart clearly was a star in the making, and that’s a sort of a unique situation that you can’t always necessarily count on but give me your thoughts on in the company a man.
John Gaspard
I don’t think he got lucky casting Aaron, I think he looked for and found Aaron and might not have started it without him. He was the best actor to show up and that’s why he’s there. Le Buet is a funny guy because he’s one of these writer directors who sometimes doesn’t care if you like the movie. And you know, there’s lots of directors who want to make sure you love their movie. He doesn’t really care. He wants you to think about it. And you know, talk about it afterwards, but isn’t going to bend to what he thinks an audience wants. He’s going to be but what he wants. What I thought was interesting about him was he didn’t have any money at all and he was able to raise it. They didn’t have a very big budget. And he wanted to shoot really long takes, which is easy now, but at the time was sort of verboten for a low budget movie. I know Roger Corman talked about that when he was talking with Peter Bogdanovic about what he’d done in targets. And Peter did some very, very long takes. And Corman said, you know, it sort of goes against the rules. However, rules are made to be broken. And if you’re not going to get a ton of coverage, then move the camera while you’re doing logics that says rule. Anyway, Laborde hadn’t really realized the impact doing really long continuous takes were going to have, because he was just doing single masters, you know, that’s the scene. And if it’s a four-minute scene, and you’re three minutes and 50 seconds into it, and you screw up, all of them goes away. And they ended up having to raise money while shooting in order to complete the shooting, because they just they simply ran out of film, way, way early. But what I like about that film, it’s really not a real warm likeable film was at that budget level. You can do what you want, you can make the movie you want. If you’re not beholden to getting money back to people, if you’re not beholden to being a box office success, but instead an interesting film, that’s the time you can do it. Because the guys who have done it, then go on to do features. Sometimes they don’t take the kind of risks they used to, because they can no longer afford to. So, if you’re going to do it, do it now, when you really can’t afford to take those risks.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, sound advice, for sure. So, another film I just want to talk about briefly is Open Water. I thought this was a really excellent film. And I also do think that the digital sort of revolution had a great impact on a film like Open Water, because it doesn’t feel as small as some of these other films, like in the Company of the Man, you can tell us a low budget with Open Water, it feels a lot bigger, doesn’t feel quite as low budget, even though the budgets may have been fairly comparable. But again, let’s go through that one. What’s some of your thoughts on Open Water?
John Gaspard
Well, one of the reasons it feels bigger is because it’s not the ocean, which is very helpful as a backdrop. This is another case of filmmaker who thought, this is my chance to do what I want. And he didn’t shoot alternate endings, it was always going to end the way that it ended. And he also took his time, it costs very little to shoot it in the big scheme of things. However, there were costs involved in going to the Bahamas and bringing the two actors with them and the gear that had to happen, you know, travel and all that he ran into an issue when the main actor screwed up his leg before they’re going to go shoot their last section of the film. And they had to put it off for many, many months, he was not able to be in the water all day kicking because of his leg. However, he used that time to edit. And so, by the time he was there shooting, the final bit, he knew what he needed. And he had all the pieces he needed. So, he didn’t waste time with it. But again, he and his wife did it entirely on their own schedule. And they did it the way they want to. And you know, those are the low budget movies that I really attracted to are the ones where they went, this is what I want to do. I don’t care if a distributor doesn’t like it is you know, George Romero and the guys he did now living dead with we’re big commercial filmmakers. George Romero told me, he said, I’ve shot far more footage of beer being poured into glass and I ever had movies. I made commercials for years. And he made high end commercials when they decided to do a quote unquote, low budget low budget movie, they settled on a horror film because they knew they’d make their money back. And they weren’t, you know, totally enamored with the idea. But once they committed to it, they committed to it. And one of the things they committed to was, this is the ending we’re going to have and we’re not going to shoot another ending. And I believe they lost a couple possible distribution opportunities because of that, but they said we don’t care. We don’t care. This is the movie we want to make ending we want to make. I don’t know if he had that freedom as much later on, that he had at that point to do what he wanted to do. And that’s, like I say, I’m a broken record on this. But if you want to do what you want, do it for no money.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, these next two questions are kind of the same question just the opposite sides of the coin. And this is coming from sort of a screenwriting perspective, are there some things that you might think are cheap when you’re writing numb, but are actually quite costly? And then the opposite side of that, are there some things that are expensive that you might think, are relatively cheap? And, you know, I asked, there’s sort of the cliche things like, obviously period pieces with costumes, stadium scenes, helicopters, I mean, there’s these things we sort of know but and, you know, in lieu of like, what’s happened with visual effects over the last couple of years, are there some things that you sort of maybe could encourage writers to do and tell writers well, don’t do this because this is going to be expensive, even though you don’t know that it I don’t think it is?
John Gaspard
You know, one of the rules of thumb has always been make a low budget movie, put two people in a room. And that’s cheap to do. I was talking to a filmmaker who made a movie called Judy Berlin, his name is Erik Mendelsohn. He teaches, I think, at NYU teaches film. And we were talking about that very thing that as a beginning filmmaker, you’re taught well, you know, just due to people in the room, it doesn’t cost any money. But he said, most people, when they’re starting are not capable yet of writing something that’s going to maintain for 90 minutes of two people in a room. So, while it seems like it’s something very cheap, isn’t necessarily going to work for you, because you’re not going to be able to pull it off. And so, you know, don’t go with that cliche was do two people in a room. On the other hand, you know, don’t write 1 million locations, because you’re going to you’re going to keep moving. When it comes to what you should do, I just go along with? Well, I think Robert Rodriguez is the best example of that. Everybody knows the story that he put himself in the hospital to do a drug test for 30 days, took the money and made El Mariachi but while he was there writing the script, he had a friend who go to the location where they’re going to shoot and sent him pictures. And I think some videos well, everything that was available. And that’s what he wrote. This is what’s available to me. That’s what I can shoot there for. That’s what I’m going to write. And it’s, you know, people who are going to write it and not shoot it. Don’t think for a second about well, okay, well, let’s do let’s begin with an aerial shot flying over the city. So easy to do not with drones. But years ago, very, very expensive. And you forget that you, you can’t be that person, you can’t be the one who has all these, these different tools. So do what Rodriguez did, which is right, which you have or what you can get for free. Then just on the technical side, if you’re going to shoot that night, instead of during the day, keep in mind that it’s costly to get lights at night. It’s hard to light something. We don’t all have the budget of Nope. Where you can like an exterior scene where you can see for miles when Brian De Palma did that in Blowout. And I think it was almost a segment who shot it. It was a huge part of their budget to shoot the sequence that night because you had to be able to see from Travolta’s point of view all the way through the woods and down into the where the car goes and all that, very expensive to do that a little easier now, because lenses are faster, and lights are a little cheaper, but it’s the sort of things you take for granted. I know when I was shooting corporate videos, I would often get scripts from people who, you know, it’s a corporate video, it’s not that big of a deal, but they would write stuff you just can’t do. They’d say, alright, so we have these characters, and they’re sitting out on a deck and they’re talking and you go well, okay, this is a corporate video, we don’t have a ton of money. Now you we have to get a location, that’s fine, we also have to get a location that’s quiet. And I don’t know how often you’ve tried to shoot outside, no matter where you are, even in the middle of nowhere, is noisy. Everything is noisy. So, keeping that in mind and going Yes, I understand that. I have a great field here that I shoot in. But keep in mind that it’s also two miles in the airport. And that every two and a half minutes is going to be an airplane, the things you just don’t think about. I mean, I remember shooting a corporate video where they insisted on a shooting outside on this lovely beach. And we had to shoot it in half a day. And it was a semi cloudy day, which is, you know, you either want cloudy or sunny. You don’t want semi cloudy, because you’re trying to get lines of dialogue. And I actually had one crew person whose job it was to stand there and look up and go, okay, the cloud is coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s here and then you roll and you shoot. So, you can match stuff. You just never think about that when you’re writing. But the more you shoot what you write The more you are able to solve those problems on paper rather than at 5am, with the crew standing around going, how are we going to do this?
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, solid advice. Again, so you’ve written a number of novels. And I noticed that eaglet marks mystery series on your resume. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, like what drew you to write novels? I’m just curious. And I get screenwriters emailing me, you know, wanting to know about, well, how can they convert their screenplay into a novel? There’s all these the Kindle platforms, there’s a number of platforms now where you can potentially sell these things. But just talk about that a little bit. What was the purpose of this? And how did you make that transition from filmmaker to actual novelist?
John Gaspard
Yeah, they are very similar nowadays, when it comes to self-producing and distributing movies is very similar to self-producing and distributing books, whether they’re on very, very similar tracks right now. One of the main reasons I switched to it was I’m now 65 years old. And when you’re making movies for no money, it’s tiring. And although the gear has gotten lighter, thank you, and the lights have gotten lighter, it’s still sort of tiring to get up and do that. Whereas if you want to tell a story in a novel form, you can get up, you know, at 8am, and order around with and do whatever you want. So, it’s still the storytelling thing that I like doing. It’s just doing it a different way that doesn’t involve having to corral a lot of people and a lot of equipment and figure out how we’re getting lunch to them. And all that. But the things that I learned in low budget, film production and distribution, definitely, the absolutely parallel what I’m doing, as an independent book author, I started out the landmark series, the first four books were published by an actual traditional publisher. And I spent a couple of years trying to get a publisher via trying to get an agent. And I’m sure that feels very familiar to anybody who has got a screenplay and they’re trying to get an agent, to take it to someone to produce it. It’s the same process, it’s just knocking on doors and sending letters and getting rejections and all of that. And then at some point, when you’re a filmmaker, you go, wait a second, I have a screenplay, I can shoot this myself, and you make your movie. And nowadays, you make your movie and you finish it. And you go to film hub, and you upload and you hit a button and you’re done, distributed. It has to be a good movie. And if it isn’t a good movie, some of the distributors will take it will look at it and realize, oh, nobody’s watching this, and we’ll give it back. But it’s a whole lot simpler than when I finished like Beyond Bob in 19. When I finished that, in early 90s, and we had to load it all up and take it out to New York to the independent feature film market. And we had a terrible slot, when we showed it and didn’t get distributed from that and banged on doors for a couple years to find a VHS. I mean, it’s just a long process. With books just now like with movies, I don’t have to do that I bought back the rights from the publisher, because they weren’t doing enough with the books, I wrote four more books, I self-published them. Amazon Kindle and all the other sites, their software’s available, do the formatting, it’s easy to get distribution, I can do my own audiobooks, I can do all the promotion for them for my desktop, it’s a very, very, very similar process to making movies and stuff out there. And, you know, I have the advantage of writing a novel. You know, writing is hard. And there’s a lot of very good excuses out there not to write, everybody can find their own. But there’s a lot of good reasons to do it. And getting to the end is hard and all that. But because I’ve been writing screenplays, since I was 13, I’ve even been forced to write every day in the corporate world, I don’t have that same sort of hill to climb, when it comes time to sit down and write something. I’m not going to have a problem with a with a blank page, way some people do. And I’ve also had the advantage of writing scenes, and dialogue, and characters, and then shooting those scenes and then editing those scenes. And so, you get a very good sense of when does a scene start? When should it really start? It should have started to page later than I started it. Just like when you’re editing and you go, oh, I don’t need the first minute of the scene. I don’t need the last 30 seconds of this scene. You’ve learned all that by doing it. And when it comes time to do a novel, that’s all incorporated into your bones. You know how to do that part. And that makes it a whole lot easier. Now the downside is you don’t have a crew of people that you’re working with. It’s entirely on you to do it. So, you don’t have someone you know, a DP who says I would have with the camera here, or costume designer says here’s what you need for this character or a composer who absolutely saves a scene, by the music they make, you don’t have that you don’t get to put it in front of an audience. You don’t have to have that visceral response. You get, you know, very nice emails from readers who liked your stuff. And now that I’ve done a podcast about the book, if people can hear chapters of the book, and we talk to different performers who have things to do with magic, because the books are about magic, I get responses from them. But you don’t get that same visceral response that you get when you’ve got 500 people at a festival and your movie finishes and they’re just cheering and yelling and laughing. That’s the downside.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And have you tried to take the ELI Marks book series and turned it into a screenplay or a TV series? Is that on the horizon? Is that something you’d like to do?
John Gaspard
Yes, and no, I’m fine with the books, just being the books and being on the shelves and people reading them, that’s fine. If nothing ever happened with them, I did take one of these short stories and turn it into sort of a half animated an animatic, which was sort of fun to see what it looked like with the characters talking and moving. And I have taken the first book in the series, which is called the ambitious card and have structured what it would be if it were a five-episode, streaming show, and I’ve written a pilot for it. And I’ve been very lucky to get hooked up with a excellent screenwriter who acted as a mentor, because it’s been a while going a long time, since I’d written something I was trying to sell, which is different than writing something you’re going to shoot. It’s really different. I hadn’t done that since I sold stuff to TV back in the late 80s. So, relearning that process of you’re not just making a list or recipe list for something you know how to make already. When you do that sort of screenplay for yourself. I’m writing something where I’ve got to get you the reader to really see it and go; Yes, I can see where this is going to play great for five hours over five episodes. So yeah, it’s out there. And I’m working on it. It’s a whole different animal than a novel. And of course, I know that. But I had to be reminded of that. As I was working on it, I was reminded of Emma Thompson, who when she wrote Sense and Sensibility, somebody said, so you had this great novel to start from. And she said, I don’t know if there’s more than five lines from that novel, that it made it into the script. It’s a whole different thing. I mean, it’s the same flavor. It’s the same story. It’s the same characters. But even I when I’m writing a pilot for this book that I know really well with these characters that I know really well. The lines that were written in the novel, it’s too much I got to shorten it, I got to get to the point faster. It’s got to be a movie. And that’s, you know, I know that obviously, I know that. But you remember it as you’re in the midst of trying to do it.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, I just like to wrap up these interviews by asking the guests if there’s anything they’ve seen recently that they thought was really great that they could recommend to our screenwriting audience, anything on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, anything out there that you could recommend to us.
John Gaspard
I’m going to send you online, I believe, it’s streaming some places, but you can absolutely see it online. It’s a web series called Theatre People. And it was made by a friend of mine, maybe five or six years ago, he had been in LA for a while working as a writer, was tired of things not getting produced. He decided, you know, I know a lot of great actors in the Twin Cities, I’m just going to come home and make a web series. And I believe it’s four or five seasons long, the first season or so like 10-minute episodes, and then I can have them. And then he got some money. And I believe that later seasons, the episodes a little longer. But even though he had some money, it’s made for no money at all. But however, he did have in his hip pocket, the fact that he’d been an actor in the Twin Cities for a dozen years, and he knew everybody, I mean, everybody from the best-known names in the Twin Cities theater scene to people that you’ve not heard of, who are all terrific actors. And this was a labor of love. He wrote it directed and edited it he shot it himself. He did the lighting himself. It looks small, because it is. But the thing that he brought, he had two secret weapons. One. He had a fantastic cast of great actors in the Twin Cities. And two, he’s a really, really good writer, and he knew how to write for what he could shoot. It’s called Theater People. I think there’s four seasons, and I think there’s a pilot first of season out there. But they’re just really nicely done. Just go to theater people web series, search for that and you’ll find it.
Ashley
Perfect. Well, that’s a great recommendation. So, I appreciate that and definitely not something I’d heard about. I’ll check that out. How can people find your book books. I assume they’re available on Amazon everything books, it says but is there any specific place you might want to send people if they’re looking to buy one of your books?
John Gaspard
Sure. The best place to go is my publishing company, which is our Albert’s bridge books. That’s outreach Albertsbridgebooks.com. You can find all the fiction there, you can also find all the filmmaking books. And I have a new one that I put together for novelists. I’ve taken some of the best ideas that I’ve heard from screenwriters about the tricks they do. And it’s a book for novelist to see how they can make those is their own in their novel writing called the popcorn principles.
Ashley
Okay, great. And what’s the best way for people to just keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, a blog, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will put that in the show notes as well.
John Gaspard
Sure, I would just go to John Gaspard author on Facebook, my author page. It has all the podcast stuff out of film podcast, have the book podcast, and then all the books. And the films are all kind of you can find them around there.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect, John. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking today. Great interview is really fascinating. I could talk to you for hours about all these films, just a wealth of information. So, I really do appreciate it. So. thank you will talk to you later.
SYS’s from concept to completion, screenwriting course, is now available, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse, it will take you through every part of writing a screenplay, coming up with a concept outlining, writing the opening pages, the first act, second act, third act and then rewriting and then there’s even a module at the end on marketing your screenplay once it’s polished and ready to be sent out. We’re offering this course in two different versions, the first version, you get the course, plus, you get three analyses from an SYS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get to analyses on your first draft of your screenplay. This is just our introductory price, you’re getting three full analyses, which is actually the same price as our three-pack analysis bundle. So, you’re essentially getting the course for free when you buy the three analyses that come with it. And to be clear, you’re getting our full analysis with this package. The other version doesn’t have the analysis. So, you’ll have to find some friends or colleagues who will do the feedback portion of the course with you. I’m letting SYS select members do this version of the course for free. So, if you’re a member of SYS select you already have access to it. You also might consider that as an option. If you join SYS select, you will get the course as part of that membership to a big piece of this course is accountability. Once you start the course, you’ll get an email every Sunday with that week’s assignment. And if you don’t complete it, we’ll follow up with another reminder the next week, it’s easy to pause the course if you need to take some time off. But as long as you’re enrolled, you’ll continue to get reminders for each section until it’s completed. The objective of the course is to get you through it in six months, so that you have a completed power screenplay ready to be sent out. So, if you have an idea for a screenplay, and you’re having a hard time getting it done, this course might be exactly what you need. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It’s all one word, all lowercase. I will of course the link to the course in the show notes and I will put a link to the course on the homepage up in the right-hand sidebar. On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Britt McAdams, who just did a cool film called Paint starring Owen Wilson. We talked through this film and how it all came together for him. Like a lot of filmmakers. He wrote this script many years ago and it was a long slog to get it produced. So, we really dig into that and how ultimately this all did come together. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s our show. Thank you for listening.