This is a transcript of SYS 468 – Psychology For Writers With William Indick .
Welcome to Episode 468, the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing psychologist, William Indick. He has written a number of interesting books for screenwriters about how to use psychology in your stories to build fully fleshed out character, so stay tuned for that interview. SYS’s six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our early bird deadline is March 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 looking at scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. I had the winner from 2020; Richard Pierce on the podcast in Episode 378. He won the contest, it was introduced to one of our industry judges, Ted Campbell, who was actually back this year and as judging again. And he took the hit the script to his contacts over at MarVista Entertainment and actually got the script produced. And we’ve had a number of other scripts option from the contest as well over the years. So, we’re getting a nice bit of traction with these scripts. I know there’s lots of producers looking for high quality low budget scripts. This year, we have a short film category as well 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means submit that as well. Once again, I do have a number of industry judge producers who are looking specifically for short scripts. If you want to submit to the contest, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Also, again this year we’re running an in-person Film Festival in tandem with the screenplay contest, it is for low budget films produced for less than 1 million US dollars. We have a features and shorts category. The festival is going to take place in Los Angeles, California from October 6th to the 15th. If you’ve produced a short film or know someone who has, by all means please do submit it, or let them know about it shorts are easy to program, I can run two or three of them before a feature film. Or I can even do a whole section we actually did that last year at the festival we had a couple of blocks that were just like for short films. So short films are really easy to program, it’s fun to see them you get to meet a lot of filmmakers. So, I really do encourage you not just to if you have a short but think about even going out and just making a short write a short go out and shoot it and see if we can screen it here at the festival. If you do have a finished film and would like to submit, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival, you’ll see a link to our Film Freeway page, we’re actually taking all the submissions for the film festival through Film Freeway, so you can find us on there as well. So once again, if you want to check out the screenplay contest, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. And if you’re listening to this podcast after the contest closes, we do run this contest every year. So just check back at our landing page and you can see whatever dates are approaching again, that’s sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest.
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If you want my free guide How to Sell a screenplay in five weeks can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. 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’ll teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll 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 am interviewing psychologist William Indick, here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome William to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
William Indick
Great to be here.
Ashley
So maybe to start out you can just give us a quick overview of your background where you grew up. And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
William Indick
Sure. I grew up in New Jersey. Not too far from New York City, but I’ve always had a love for movies, especially growing up, I used to watch old movies with my dad. So, there was a connection there, but also a sort of understanding of how movies evolved over time. I studied Psychology in college and got a PhD in Developmental Psychology. So, I’ve been a psychology professor for over 20 years. But my primary interest has always been in media and film, and trying to use what I know about psychology to figure out not only the process of understanding film, but for screenwriters, the process of creating film.
Ashley
So, over your career, I’ve noticed you’ve written and we’re going to talk about one or two books specifically, but you’ve written a bunch of psychological books that are sort of geared towards filmmakers. How did you end up in that path? Is this just something part of your being a professor as publishing? I’m just curious, like, where do you see you sort of see this? And how does this fit into your overall career as a professor?
William Indick
I would say, when I started out as a professor and trying to teach a class like theories of personality, which involves a lot of very complex philosophies, like, you know, coming from Freud, and Jung and Erickson, my students were having a difficult time understanding it, and I was having a difficult time explaining it. But I found that when I used examples from movies, they got it, they because movies provide, you know, behavior on screen that could be paused around analyzed. So, it was very useful to use films in my class to teach psychology. And that was what I started writing about. And then, when I actually met Ken Lee, from Michael weeks productions, and was talking about my book, he said; Well, you should write something for screenwriters. And all you have to do is take these film analyses, these ways of trying to understand the psychology and film and just sort of flip it, instead of making it an analysis, make it a prescription, say, you know, take this example from this film, and see how this director or this writer use this, like psychological principle in the behavior of their characters. And here’s how you can do it in your script. So, it was really just sort of a simple suggestion from somebody who gave me the idea to write not only for people interested in film, but people in make who are interested in making films.
Ashley
So, and we’ll dig into some of that. But I wonder just as we start the conversation, can you give us some of those examples that you were just talking about? Like, what were some examples of the concepts you were trying to teach the students that you were able to illustrate with films?
William Indick
Yes, I do. I think the first thing I did, the first film I used was American Beauty, which is a great movie, not my favorite movies. But it’s so overtly psychological, that it was a great way for me to take the Freudian defense mechanisms, and just sort of break them down and said; Okay, well, here’s this character from American Beauty, engaging in denial. And here’s another one who’s completely wrapped up in depression. And here’s sort of the reaction formation at the end, where the character who hates all gay people, obviously, is gay himself. So just taking all these little sort of psychological, well, you know, Freud, call them defense mechanisms. But in a film, if you put them write them into your character, we can call them devices. And there were all those devices just sort of listed nicely in a row. And all they had to do was show the film and pause and say, you get it here and you get it there. Yeah, so that was sort of the first time I used it, it worked quite well. And I just went on from there.
Ashley
Now, as you’ve gotten into this and started to analyze in that direction, have you seen some issues where screenwriters maybe could use this prescription where they maybe gloss over some of these things? And again, taking it and sort of giving a prescription? Like what are the mistakes that screenwriters make when not applying some of these psychological tenants?
William Indick
Well, I mean, the one principle of screenwriting that always should apply is “show, don’t tell.” If you can explain something about your character by something they do, rather than having a voice over narration, tell the audience what they should think about that character, then, you know, I would think it’s the screenwriter’s duty, or the director’s duty to, to express it visually or through action or behavior. And so, when I see a movie, and I see, they’re not even trying to explain things through action and dialogue, it’s just constant Voice Over so that every scene is just almost a narration of what’s going on in the character’s head instead of the audience trying to figure that out through their behavior and through their dialogue. That’s where I think, you know, first of all, you know, the screenwriter should have read a book about screenwriting. And then secondly, they should have read a book about psychology for screenwriting, because that’s all about making those psychological traits of the characters visible All but not obvious. No one’s telling you what you should think about the character. Nevertheless, the behavior of the character itself determines what the audience will think.
Ashley
Yeah. So, one of the things with any kind of prescription like this, and you get the same sort of pushback from these screenwriting books by Syd field, Blake Snyder, one of the things that I think like using this example of a Freudian, like, Oedipus is sort of the prime example of obviously, Oedipus was written way before Freud. And then Freud comes along, and then they do sort of a reevaluation of Oedipus through this Freudian lens. And I often think that you just mentioned American Beauty. And I can tell you from dealing with a lot of screenwriters, a lot of the films that are, you know, really well done, like American Beauty are really good on the character. Generally, I find it comes from a very intuitive place from the writer. And so, I always feel like a lot of these things, a lot of these sort of prescriptive things are sort of after the fact. And it’s, I’m always, I always wonder how that really helps. Like, I don’t know that a Freudian analysis of Oedipus really would help a writer much. And so, I always wonder how can we actually shoehorn this in to help the writers because number two, that’s number one. Number two, the people that are more analytical, use the right brain left brain, the people that are more analytical tend to be better on structure. But those are the people I think, in some ways you might appeal to this, but I don’t know that they’re necessarily that good at this part of the equation, they might be more into structure and student story as opposed to the character. So that’s what sort of what I get. But I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit how can screenwriters actually implement this into their screenwriting and sort of a more practical way?
William Indick
Oftentimes, when I’m trying to explain things to my students, I make things as simple as possible. And then, you know, get to the complicated from there. So that basically, any principle in psychology is a fairly intuitive thing that we know about ourselves, yet, we have to really study it to understand the mechanisms behind it. And that’s what I think is true about film, film is a very user-friendly medium. Anybody could watch a movie, and anybody could understand a movie on any level. But the screenwriter has to understand the movie on a much deeper level, they not only have to intuitively get what these characters are about and how they’re going to interact. But they really have to be very, very have a lot of finesse, and a lot of skill in the way that their characters interact and the way that their characters behave, so that they can give you a sense of who they are, in a way that’s not obvious. And I think that’s where intuition falls flat, where you can have a sense of who a character is. And you can write that into that character, through voice over narration, or through having them you know, explain in some soliloquy, how they feel. But to be able to get to provide a caricature of this character to the audience, that gives you that tells the audience what they need to know about this character, without having to draw it out for them. That’s where, I think a little bit more skill and a little bit more study comes into play. And probably more useful than reading a book on the psychology of screenwriting, would be watching 1000 movies, and, and getting that sense, intuitively, just from watching characters behave on screen. The benefit to a book like psychology for screeners when writers is I’ve watched 1000 movies. So, I can sort of give screenwriters a little bit of a guidance, say, well go to this movie for a good example of denial, or go to this movie for a good example of a Jungian archetype. So that when filmmakers are doing the primary job of becoming a filmmaker, which is watching a ton of movies and trying to understand them on a deeper level, they might have a book or two to guide them in that process. And it’s not just oh, what’s on TV tonight?
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, I think that’s, that’s an excellent answer. So, I noticed in your book, you have three of your early chapters. One’s on Freud, one’s on Erickson, one’s on Jung. I wonder if you can just quickly go through those three psychologists. I mean, I think we’ve all sort of heard of Freud and sort of understand what he’s about, or at least to some degree, and sort of just popular culture, but Erikson and Jung, these are people we’ve all heard of, but I honestly don’t know anything about them or how they even differ from Freud. But just give us a little snippet like, like, what are those chapters about? What are those psychologists about? And how can screenwriters maybe learn more about them or implement some of their ideas?
William Indick
Yeah, and that’s true. And when we speak Freud, Freud is almost in impossibly broad, he wrote so many books on so many various topics. And what he was trying to do is create a theory of everything, a way of explaining all psychological behavior and phenomenon with one theory. So, it’s very, very broad. So, if you try to sort of buckle it down and say, Well, what’s Freud about? It? Probably you could say, well, it was about the unconscious. And that’s as far as you can go without, you know, thing, another 10,000 words, but that’s a big contribution, the unconscious, this idea that whatever’s going on consciously whatever you’re aware of, in the moment, there’s stuff going on behind the scenes that you’re not aware of. But that is definitely influencing your behavior and your feelings and your reactions to other people. So, just understanding that in and of itself is a great contribution from Freud. With Jung and Erickson, really, we focus more on their specific contribution, Jungian psychology for me, the greatest contribution is the study of archetypes. This idea that not only is this is there, this unconscious realm of existence that we all live in, but it we’re all connected, unconsciously, all the stories, all the movies, all the TV shows, and books that we’ve written, have the symbolic figures in them. And at a certain level of abstraction, all of those figures are the same. We share a common symbology, or a common way of making symbols that are relevant for everyone. So, Jung, Jung’s theory of archetypes, to me is really a vital toolbox for writers who are trying to figure out how to how to present their characters on the screen for their audience. And it doesn’t mean that every character has to be an archetype. But if you understand your archetypes, and you understand how they function, then you can understand well, who is this character? What is this character’s conflict? And how is this character going to be presented on the screen. So that’s basically the sort of collection of symbols that can be projected onto any type of character. With Erickson, it’s more about identity, the sort of personal struggle to define one’s identity. And Erickson’s stage theory, starts with birth and ends basically with death. So, he gives us eight chapters in life that any person who’s developing is going to go through. So that’s a wonderful structure as well, if you want to tell the life story of somebody, or even if you want to tell a story about someone in a discrete period of time, you could think of it in the Ericksonian sense, well, if character is another word for identity, and every story is about character development, then every story is also about identity development. So, if I have a character who has a conflict, I could think of that as an identity crisis, and one of Erickson’s eight identity crises. And a good question for me is, well, you know, what character what identity crisis is this character going through? And another thing to remember is that every character is always going through some type of identity crisis. That’s sort of the heart of Erickson’s theories that we’re all developing constantly. We’re all going through an identity crisis. So, if you understand the eight different identity crises, then those are great tools to project onto your characters as well. It gives you sort of instant conflict, or at least instant understanding of what a conflict could be for that character.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s fascinating. So, then I also noticed, two of your chapters were on the hero’s journey, the one was on the hero’s journey, one was the heroines journey. So again, I think as screenwriters probably most of us have heard of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. So maybe you can speak to that a little bit. What is your spin on that from sort of a psychological standpoint?
William Indick
Well, basically what Joseph Campbell did, and he’s not wasn’t the first one to do this, but he kind of, I guess, did it the most successfully was he looked at what he called the mono myth, meaning, taking all of the myths and ancient stories and folktales and fairy tales that have become part of our what Jung would call a collective unconscious, and breaking it down to a common pattern that you can see in the life story of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, and every prophet and every classical hero and every demigod from the Judeo Christian mythos. All of these, all of these characters have a mono myth, because they seem to go through similar patterns of events in their life, and also similar conflicts with their father, with their mother with their significant others. So, the idea is, well, why do we have 1000 stories, but they all have the same basic pattern? And also, why do we have 1000 hero characters, but it’s all basically the same character. And Joseph Campbell was not a psychologist, but his work is very psychological. And what he did was from his understanding of Freud, Jung and Ronk, and some others He was able to say the reason we have this model myth, the reason why the pattern keeps repeating itself is because it has a psychological function. Everybody is going on an adventure in their life. Everybody is seeking their identity. Everybody has to come to grips with issues such as you know, what did I get from my mother? What did I get from my father, everybody has to figure out how they’re going to accomplish what they dream of accomplishing, while also being a good person, a good citizen, a good father, husband, wife, son, etc. So, these are all the struggles that we deal with daily life. And the hero’s journey is merely a reflection of that, taking somebody’s average life and their average struggles and their average conflicts, and conflating it into a huge mythological story with Gods demons in great battles, monsters and things like that. It’s making it a big dramatic scene so that people will want to listen to it. But the reason people want to listen to it is not because it’s dramatic, or because it’s big, or because it has gods and devils. The reason we’re interested in it is because it’s telling the story of ourselves. And we see ourselves in the hero, and we see ourselves in every stage of the hero’s journey, because they’re all just different symbols of life and the struggles in life.
Ashley
So, what is the heroine’s journey? How does that differ? And how does that compare?
William Indick
The heroine’s journey? Well, first of all, we have to say that the hero’s journey, this sort of classic 17 Stage structure that Campbell delineated is an ancient structure. And it harkens back to a time where men had all of the power in society and women had none. So, the women characters in the mythological hero’s journey are ancillary characters, they’re not the hero. And that’s not how we live today. In today’s world, men and women are equal, and they each have their own adventures. And a woman can be a hero, just like a man. And we don’t even use the term heroine anymore. Even that term is a retrograde term, we say, well, there’s a female hero or a male hero, or a non-binary hero. So, the reason we have the morning, Murdoch wrote the book, the heroine’s journey, is to point out that the hero’s journey is retrograde, that it shows a very sort of old version of what a man should be, and certainly a very old version of what a woman should be. So, if you’re writing a female hero character, you can’t rely on the regular hero’s journey, because that’s the story of a man. And a man is different from a woman. And it’s also a story about a very ancient man and very ancient times. So, you have to update the story, or update the mythological pattern, not just so that it’s modern, but also so that it’s inclusive of the challenges of a woman and what so what Maureen Murdock was putting forth was the idea that there are certain challenges that women in our society face that men don’t have to face. So, for example, in a story like the Erin Brockovich, which is a typical story of a woman hero, her first challenge is not to sort of find her nemesis challenge. That person that comes a little bit later, later on her first challenge is to sort of state to the people around her; hey, I can be a hero too. Just because I’m a woman, doesn’t mean I can’t be a hero. So, for Erin Brockovich, her first challenge isn’t, you know, this great legal battle, her first challenge is to get people to take her seriously as someone in the field of law, because she’s a woman, and also because she’s not a lawyer. So yes, so it’s a we needed that structure for modern female heroes, who are not going to be derivative of the traditional male hero character, and who are also not going to be derivative of the traditional female character as we’ve known her so far. So how do you create a new female hero for the 21st century? Well, you need to rework the ancient patterns so that they work for the modern day.
Ashley
And don’t you think a lot of what you’re getting, you’re sort of touching a lot of what you’re describing sort of this old Joseph Campbell version of a hero versus the more modern version? A lot of what the arguments today we’re having in this country, you know, from top to bottom, politically and everything else. And I do wonder, like, I mean, obviously, you’re a college professor for you’re coming from that angle. But I do wonder if, like you say, well, things have to be updated. But we see movies like the most recent Tom Cruise Maverick, do extremely well. And I would argue that that’s definitely, you know, harkens back to a more traditional view of the hero, as opposed to maybe more a more modern view, and these things can still work. I mean, if they’re baked into our psychology, don’t you think that’s going to be a tough thing to change?
William Indick
Well, first of all, the reason Joseph Campbell’s model is so popular is because it still works. So, it works. If you’re writing a hero who was a retrograde hero who’s a sort of callback to you know, Perseus, or Hercules or these ancient classical eras, then that structure is perfectly appropriate for you. And the majority of heroes that we see on the screen. Are these sorts of non-realistic ancient superhero types. You know, the superheroes themselves are not modern character classical demigod heroes, have divine heroes. So, most of the heroes we see on the screen are not modern. However, when thinking about the female character, and writing the female as a hero, in a way that’s not derivative of either the male pattern or of the traditional female pattern, then I think, is what is where the new structure comes in. But you don’t need a new structure for an ancient hero. And if most of the heroes we’re seeing on the screen are ancient heroes in terms of their structure anyway. And that’s not a problem.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, again, you had a couple of chapters sort of on genre. And I’d be curious, just same sort of thing. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on, you know, the Western, fantasy, sci fi, those are three genres you pulled out? How do you apply some of this psychology to those specific genres, you know, all genres were well familiar with at this point?
William Indick
Well, for the Western, and I wrote actually wrote a book about each of those genres and the psychology in each of those genres. For the Western, again, we have the Western heroes, typically a very masculine hero who harkens back to the sort of classical heroes of old. So, a lot of the discussion in that chapter is, well, how do we take this very, very kind of retro grade character, and modernize it a bit for the screen. But I also spend a lot of time trying to get to the heart of what the Western is. And the Western is very personal genre for Americans. Because it’s our mythology. It’s not, you know, Gladiator, or Braveheart, or Superman or spider man. This is the mythology of the American West, the time when our mythos and our heroes and our kind of archetypal symbols were all born. So, it tells the story of us to us in a way that’s supposed to make us reflect upon ourselves. And that’s why the Western is such a popular genre, especially in America. Everyone keeps saying, oh, the Westerns going to die. The West is going tonight, but it never dies. Again, the reason is, because it’s that one mythology that is truly our mythology as Americans. And whenever you want to get to some type of touchstone of the American culture, or the American ethos, we always just sort of by default, go back to the Western. So, it’s the genre that’s truly us and the genre that we Americans use to define us. The fact that it’s such an inherently violent genre is really a reflection of American culture.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure it can you break down Sci Fi, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Sci Fi. That’s a genre I’ve written a little bit in.
William Indick
Yeah, well, I really start, I start with fantasy and try to understand fantasy, as really the psychology of childhood, what the, what the child fears what the child wants the most, and how the child deals with conflicts in ways that are different from the ways that adults deal with conflict. So, I use Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s kind of an excellent example of a story that you’re really seeing through the eyes of a child. Sci Fi is fantasy. The only difference between science fiction and fantasy is the sort of plot device that gets the story going. In fantasy, there’s some type of magic at play. Whether it’s a magic ring, or a magic mirror, or magic wand, or a magic sword, there’s some type of magic at play. And the plot revolves around that magic and the character develops, you know, along with that magic. In science fiction, it’s not magic, but science, there’s some type of scientific thing, or some type of a new weapon or a new computer or a new type of psychological power that someone has discovered. Right? So, science fiction is fantasy. But the magic is science. And that’s really the only difference. Once you see that difference, all the other differences become sort of on an unimportant. So, for instance, fantasy is usually set either in the past or in some sort of mythological realm that feels like the past, whereas science fiction is typically set in the future or in some sort of dystopian society that seems somewhat futuristic of the future is associated with science, the past with magic.
Ashley
That’s fascinating. Yeah, I’ve never thought of it quite well. like that. Now, you mentioned something that was interesting, like fantasy. When you started out, you were saying that it had to do with the child and you were seeing Pan’s Labyrinth, the whole thing was through the child. Do you think that that’s a piece of it? Where sci fi is more… It’s the same convention where there’s this piece of magic, but sci fi maybe leans a little more towards adult fantasy leans more towards children, and I’m just spit balling ideas. I don’t know, it just is fascinating the way you said that it made me think of that.
William Indick
Well, I think traditionally, fantasy literature was written for children, like the Lord of the Rings was considered for children. And science fiction, traditionally were for adults are for young adults. Those divisions have broken down long ago, so that, you know, we adults can enjoy the Lord of the Rings. And all those fantasy films are just as much as we enjoy science fiction, and children enjoy science fiction. So, I think the sort of divisions by genre, you know, science fiction for older people, fantasy for young, I don’t think those exist anymore, the same way that animation used to be for children. But now everybody, you know, I love watching, you know, adult animated stuff. Yeah. So those are the, with the broadening of all genres. And with the sort of the condensation of all genres into the digital medium. We don’t see that much division anymore. Everybody watches everything. It’s kind of how I feel.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, you’re probably right. In fact, I saw an interesting statistic. It’s like 25% of the toy market in this day and age is actually selling toys to adults. There’s like adults that collect these things. So, you’re right, a lot of those lines have been blurred. So, this is just a couple of final questions. Before we wrap up. I was just curious, I was looking at all your books. I know, there’s a lot of screenwriters that also are book authors, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. Maybe you can just give us a little primer? How did you go about writing these books and ultimately getting them published? You have any tips for writers on that front?
William Indick
Oh, in terms of publishing, I took the traditional path is, you know, I had an idea, I wrote a proposal, and I sent them out to publishers. My tip to anybody who wants to go into book writing is to get a book contract, before you write the actual book. A) So, you don’t waste your own time. And also, B) Because publishers, especially nowadays, are becoming increasingly particular about what they want to publish. So, you’re probably going to have to work with your publisher. In writing the book, it’s generally not a good idea to write a book and then see who wants to publish it.
Ashley
Yeah, that’s the same thing with screen. Screenwriters don’t want to hear it. But a lot of the time, it’s the same thing with screenwriters, you’re much better off getting that producer involved as early as possible.
William Indick
I wrote a couple of scripts on spec back in the day, and they’re still you know, sitting in my desk drawer. Especially nowadays, you can’t you can’t just assume that somebody wants to hear your story. You have to get out there and do a lot of legwork just to find someone to listen to you pitch your story, and then hopefully you can write it.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that’s great advice. So just to wrap up the interview, is there anything you’ve seen recently that you can recommend to screenwriters, especially sort of under this lens of psychology, some programs on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, anything you would recommend that screenwriters check out?
William Indick
Well, the thing that just pops up in my mind is the Mandalorian, which is a series on Disney plus Star Wars series. Are you familiar with it?
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, actually, I’ve seen most of it. Yeah.
William Indick
And I really enjoyed watching that because as I was watching it, I saw how clearly that he was a Western. And also, having been a student of the Westerns my whole life, I saw that, while Jon Favreau was doing was he was taking each episode and using it as a sort of homage to a classic Western film. So, there’s some great John Ford films that are represented in the Mandalorian, the sort of the classic, Magnificent Seven type story where the heroes get the townspeople together to fight the enemies. There’s a sort of classic Jesse James character that we see and some the whole structure of the series itself is based on the story, the three godfathers which is a classic western theme of three outlaws who find a woman and her baby, you know, in the wilderness, the mother dies, but the three outlaws become sort of surrogate parents to this baby, and they sacrificed themselves to save it. That film has been made several times. So yeah, so the Mandalorian is interesting, because if you’re interested in westerns, and you’re interested not only in classic westerns, but how you can take the classic Western and make a modern science fiction, movie or television show about it. I found the Mandalorian is wonderful, they did a great job. And it never felt derivative. It never felt like oh, I’ve seen this 1000 times before, even though you literally have seen the characters, and the story and the plot 1000 times before, but because it’s an outer space, because there’s baby Yoda, and all these aliens and all these different devices, it makes it seemed brand new. But it’s a really, really, really old story. So, watch the Mandalorian if you’re interested in westerns, if you’re interested specifically in doing updated westerns, and also if you’re, if you’re interested in that, you know how to take a very old character, like we were talking about before from the hero’s journey, and turning that character into sort of a modern sci fi superhero type character.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. And I just want to let you pitch your books. Where can you find Psychology for Screenwriters and your other books as well, I assume anywhere where books are sold, but maybe you can give a quick plug there tell us where we could potentially find your books.
William Indick
Well, the second edition of psychology for screenwriters, which includes those three new chapters that we were talking about; fantasy, science fiction of the Western. That’s go that’s coming out in January 2023. So that’ll be out next month. And you can get that on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com. Anywhere where books are sold, Barnes and Noble stores, or MW p.com. That’s the publisher. My other books, film and my other books about media psychology are all available in the same places on amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or anywhere books are sold.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. And what’s the best way for people to just keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I’ll put in the show notes.
William Indick
If you go on YouTube, and you type in “psychology for screenwriters”, you will find a new page that I invented called the psychology for screenwriters, channel, where I do very brief videos maybe not so brief, in which I talk about a specific psychological theme. And then I use a specific film or a couple of films, using frame captures to sort of show visually how these filmmakers are using psychology in their films.
Ashley
Gotcha. Gotcha. Perfect. Well, William, I really appreciate you coming on talking today. Good luck with this book. And hopefully I’ll have you back on talking about your next book.
William Indick
Lot of fun. Thanks a lot.
Ashley
Thank you, talk to you later. Bye.
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