The music question that never stops being asked

Veronica asks:

I just read your blog on putting specific music in the script. There was one recent comment from someone who wasn't yet answered and I have the same question, pretty much. It was, "I am writing a script that is essentially centred around its music. The music, while mostly incidental bar a few exceptions, sets the theme of the film."

Think of 'Love Actually' and how there was a minute amount of specially-written music for it but the rest being actual songs. That's the way this one's written. I know Richard Curtis has earned the right to do that in his scripts but this script wouldn't have the same impact without the actual pieces of music specified as they set the mood of the scene rather than being truly incidental. How would one get this around a producer?

This is one of those tricky questions and I'm sure we'll get some disagreement here.  I'll reiterate the advice I usually give - don't fall in love with your musical choices.  Not only do those choices actually have to be cleared, but you might end up dealing with a director or a producer or a musical supervisor who sees it quite differently.

From your perspective, you're trying to tell the story in the best way possible.  If the music enhances that, great.  If the music is propping up a weak story, that's a problem.  For as much as the music in Love, Actually sets the mood, how many of those scenes really need that specific song?

Is it absolutely necessary for Hugh Grant to get down to the Pointer Sisters?  Couldn't it just as easily have been Pat Benetar?

"All You Need is Love" is a great choice for the wedding number, but is that the only song that could have been touching there?  Could "Rainbow Connection" have worked in a pinch?

And you'll find no bigger fan of "Christmas is All Around" than I, but I think Billy Mack is such a fantastic character that you could have put any pop Christmas song there and have it work.

So that's why I advise you not to lock the music down too specifically in your script - and I REALLY don't advise putting multiple songs in there.  If there's one song that you really, absolutely want to name, fine, go for it.  (Though I'd suggest covering your ass by saying "Billy Mack sings 'Christmas is All Around,' or a song like it).

While we could all list a few hundred of our favorite movie moments involving licensed music, I'd venture to say that the music itself is the make-or-break element in that moment.  It's the garnish.  The moment you are relying entirely on the sentiment attached to an existing song to prop up your scene with cheap sentimentality, you take one step closer to being a hack.

So look at your script really hard.  I'm talking really hard.  And ask yourself straight up.  Do I really need this song?

Do you?

WHY do you need this song?  What is it doing for you that your scene isn't doing on its own?  Is the song really necessary - or is it a cheat?

Using original songs in a spec

If you sent in a question recently I need to apologize because I've been incredibly lax in answering those.  Let's see if we can do something about that now.  This one comes from Damiano:


I have a story revolving around a soul singer. In one scene a musician on stage sings one of his songs in front of him. The song I want to use is a song I co-wrote myself with a friend of mine. How would this fly? Would this be problematic? Any thoughts or opinions you can offer me on this? 

It's a tricky spot to be in.  I know the conventional wisdom is to warn writers away from using copy written music in their scripts due to the expensive of licensing rights.  By that logic, writing original songs should be smooth sailing, right?

Well, maybe not entirely. 

The biggest problem I can see is that since your song isn't known, the reader won't have a good idea of what it would sound like.  In the grand scheme of things, that's probably not a fatal error, though.  The story and the writing of your spec are going to need to be strong enough to move up the ladder on their own.

If you were writing a full-on musical, this probably WOULD be a bigger issue - so those of you in that situation, proceed with caution.

But if I understand Damiano right, we're talking about one song in one scene.  I don't see it making or breaking your script either way under those circumstances.

Another perspective on getting the rights to use music

I got an email this week from a reader named David, in response to this earlier post:

I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I think what you've been saying in the past couple of posts is only partially correct.

The companies that own the rights to these songs license them out on a sliding scale based on the production budget. So yes, NBC or FOX would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to use a song in 30 Rock or Glee, but that's because those shows have 7-figure budgets per episode. A feature with a $100,000 budget, I'm almost positive, could license that exact same song for a fraction of the cost.

Again, I'm not an expert on this, and I imagine there are lots of caveats to this - for example, if the artist owns the rights to his own material, you will be facing a very different scenario than if you're dealing with BMG. But that is a rare occurrence. And I do know that several years ago I produced a no-budget play and got the synchronization rights to three very well-known songs for the low low price of free.

Just thought I'd offer this up for discussion.

Tuesday Talkback - Songs worth the money

Yesterday I talked about the high cost of using music in your spec. Performance rights apparently can be $40,000 or more, and using a famous recording of a song can sometimes cost as much as (cue Dr. Evil) One. Million. Dollars.

As you might expect, this can lead to some major budget issues. I don't doubt that many filmmakers have had to agonize over if their million dollar song was worth the cost. The right song can make for a memorable scene - though there are certainly times where the use of a particular song or four can feel self-indulgent. (Paging Mark Webb...)

So what movie songs were worth it in your estimation? (Note: I'm not talking about songs written especially for a film, like most Disney songs, for instance.)

"Don't Stop Me Now" in Shaun of the Dead?
"In Your Eyes" in Say Anything... ?
"Twist and Shout" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
"Secret Garden" in Jerry Maguire?

Why using karaoke songs in a movie can still make your budget disappear

V Thornburg asks:

I know in the past you advised against putting songs in a spec script because of licensing, and especially don't make almost the entire plot revolve around one song (The name of the girl that broke the Protagonists heart was "Mary Ann" so you used More Than a Feeling that's so original!) I'm toying with the idea of doing a movie based on a group of karaoke singers. I know that a karaoke version of a song is different, and if I remember correctly the rights to the karaoke version of a song are considerably cheaper. I would make all the songs random and have nothing tie in with the plot. Do you think it'd be worth a shot or should I just keep it in my notebook?

As always, I'm not a lawyer, so there might be something I'm missing here, but here are the issues you'll need to consider.

There are two kinds of music licensing that filmmakers need to be aware of:

Synchronization rights - this is the right to use an existing recording of a song in your film. If I want to play Boston's version of "More than a Feeling," these are the rights I need to purchase. As you might expect, with desirable songs and protective artists, obtaining this license could very easily be prohibitively expensive.

Performance rights - Essentially, this is where you purchase the rights to record or perform your own version of an existing song. (I've seen some books that refer to this as "publishing rights" as well.) In your karaoke movie, these are the rights you'd be going after. Sometimes, when it's not too expensive to get performance rights, you'll notice that some TV shows/Movies/Commercials purchase those and then hire a soundalike band to perform a cover version.

In theory, this should be cheaper - but some songs can be incredibly expensive at this level. Watch this interview with Tina Fey where she marvels at how much it must cost for Glee to get the rights to all the songs they use and tells how it cost her show, 30 Rock, $40,000 to get the rights to sing two lines of a parody version of "Night Moves."



(There's a misconception that if you do a parody, you don't have to pay. As I understand it - and again, I'm not a lawyer - it's true that you don't have to pay rights for the lyrics... but if you're using the precise melody without licensing it, I'm pretty sure the composer is owed some cash.)

$40,000... for ONE song.

This is a movie about karaoke performers, so let's assume you're going to use 10 songs, and that the $40,000 is more or less the average cost per song. (You might get a break on some, you might decide there's a song you really want and pay more.) Total music budget is suddenly $400,000.

Movies cost so much that perhaps that number seems meaningless. I'm going to try to put it in perspective. Do you know how much the minimum payment is for a screenwriter for an independent original low-budget screenplay? (Defined as $5 million or lower): $42, 930.

Yeah, it costs almost as much for ONE song as it does to pay the writer.

Any budget over $5 million nets the writer a minimum of: $87,879 for an independently-produced screenplay.

(You can find links to this documentation here.)

Consider the actor budget as well. SAG's indie rates for a low-budget film (which they define as less than $2.5 million) is a day rate of $504 or a weekly rate of $1752. (Info here.)

The non-indie rate appears to be $809 per day and $2,808 per week. (Per this.)

So I think you can quickly see the disparity here. Even if the film you write gets purchased by a studio, in theory, the music performance rights can still cost substantially more than the producers would need to spend on the talent. That right there should give you an idea of why such a big deal is made over a three-minute song - it's a comparative budget suck!

Obviously there have been plenty of low-budget movies made that paid above those minimums to secure talent that was a draw, and that probably shelled out some cash for songs that mattered to them. The bottom line is - it cost them. For some, it might well have been worth the headache to go through that for one or two songs.

But a karaoke script - with multiple cover songs? Unless you're lucky like Glee and can count a number of musicians among your fans, and thus, can count on getting a break on the licensing, music can cost a pretty penny.

Fey notes that using music got so expensive for their show that they've had to start writing their own songs that are reminiscent of other songs. This is a network show, presumably with a decent amount of cash to throw around per episode, and they still have to make these decisions for performance rights!

It's your call if you think your script is strong enough to take a gamble on. I'm just pointing out some things to consider.

Friday Free-For-All: Most bad-ass Transformers scene

Since I've been talking about effective and ineffective uses of music this week, I figured it was only appropriate that I post the most badass moment EVER in Transformers lore. The music really sells this moment.



And here's how Boogie Nights appropriated that song:

Dos and Don'ts of using music

I know that there are plenty of you who are bound to completely ignore my earlier advice about not putting songs in your spec scripts. Maybe you don't care about looking like an amateur, maybe you don't care that many of those songs are expensive and maybe you don't care about setting off a complicated approval process from whoever holds the rights to those songs.

Come to think of it, if you're going to ignore all those reasons I'm guessing you'll ignore my tips below. And yet I still spit into the wind.

DON'T
...ever have one character tell another character that a song/band will "change their life." Especially as a bonding/romantic scene between the two.

... use U2 in your musical montage. They seem to be the go-to band for depressing romantic montages ("With or Without You") and moments of ecstasy ("Beautiful Day.") If I'd kept a count on the most used band in the specs I've read, they'd easily top the list. Be original.

... use a song in the exact same way another movie has. And if you're doing this on purpose for parody purposes, the joke had better be DAMN funny.

... use songs that have been overdone by other films, either for comedic or serious purposes. Overused songs include: I Will Survive, YMCA, The Pina Colata Song, Walking on Sunshine

... specify shot-by-shot what happens at each stanza of the song. It's really annoying and makes it hard to go with the whole, "well, I'm sure they can just replace this song if they don't get clearance."

... have a character start to sing a song and then collapse into an overwrought breakdown.



... get carried away with a pretentious music video in the middle of your extremely incomprehensible screenplay.




DO

... use unexpected songs, even from familiar artists. Cameron Crowe is the master of this. In Almost Famous he used two Elton John songs: Tiny Dancer and Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. The former is a decently well-known hit, but wasn't heard regularly on the radio nor had it been used in any movies. The latter is a rather obscure song. In Jerry Maguire, when Crowe used Springsteen, he went for Secret Garden rather than any of his far better known hits.

... know the value of a totally off-beat song choice. Who would have thought that Queen's Don't Stop Me Now would have been so right for Shaun of the Dead's bar fight?

Tuesday Talkback: Getting that music number out of your system

I'm pretty sure that I've written before about how in my first screenplay I was determined to use Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight as part of a slasher killer scene. I plead guilty to totally starting with the song and then writing the scene around that. I'm not proud of it, but every writer makes these missteps when the start. I'm just glad I got it out of my system.

And I'm sure every single one of you has THAT song that you've just been dying to put in a script. Maybe you've got the scene but don't have the script. Maybe you've got both but the script was totally written in service of the song. Either way, share with us. Unburden yourself. Get it out of your system.

So share - what musical scene do you need to get out of your system before it ends up in some bitter reader's line of fire?

Why you shouldn't include songs in your specs - associations

I can always tell when I've hit my readers where they live because after a blog post that covers some bit of information that's fairly conventional wisdom within the industry, I get hit with several emails from people arguing that their writing is the exception. Usually these emails start with "What about if you do it this way?" or "Suppose it's really important that I...?" or just "Hey, can't I have fun at the spec stage?" After I mocked writers who set up websites promoting their scripts, I got invitations from several writers to check out their sites and discover all the ways that their site should be considered an exception to my advice.

Spoiler alert: none of them were at all exceptions to my advice.

Another big pressure point seems to be music in spec scripts. There's a certain segment of my readership that will go to war over the right to put their iPod playlist as the soundtrack to their spec. And I guess I just can't resist poking them.

If you're not willing to consider the financial and the clearance implications of including copywritten music in your spec, I'm going to try to appeal to you on artistic grounds.

The half of you who are laughing, shut up. The other half heading for the exits, don't bother. I've already boarded up the doors.

A while back, my wife and I were figuring out the music for our wedding ceremony. She really wanted to walk down the aisle to the Israel Kamakawiwo'ole version of Over the Rainbow. (The Hawaiian version, for those who don't know.) I told her - at least twice - "It's a nice song, but I've got such a pre-association with it, I'd rather not." I explained what I associated that song with, she still wanted to do it, so I gave in.

What do I associate that song with? I'm glad you asked.




That's from ER's "On the Beach," an episode from the 8th season that featured the slow, lingering death of star Anthony Edwards' Mark Greene. The background is that he and his daughter have been at odds all season. She's been into drugs and alcohol and he's scared about the choices she's making. He knows he's got very little time before he dies of a brain tumor, but everything he does to reach out to her fails. She pushes back at every turn... until the final night of his life. She goes to him, knowing this is the end. He offers some last advice, and then in a callback to an early attempt on Mark's part to recall the good times they had watching The Wizard of Oz, she says "I remember, Daddy" and puts her walkman on his ears as Over the Rainbow sends Mark to that big ER in the sky.

It's one of the saddest moments of the entire series and I absolutely cannot hear that version of Over the Rainbow without thinking about this scene and hearing Rachel Greene say, "I remember, Daddy," giving Mark peace as he goes off to meet his maker, and then at that point I.... Excuse me....

*sniff* *SOB* *WAAAAA!*

Sorry. I'm good now.

So on that day, she walked down the aisle looking beautiful and I was doing everything humanly possibly to not listen to the music and think of Anthony Edwards dying. No one wants Goose invading their private moment.

I'd held out hope that the emotion of the wedding day would overwrite my previous association with it. No such luck. A few months later my wife and I were watching Glee and they performed the song. Foolishly, I made some remark about always associating that music with something in particular.

"Me in my wedding dress?" she asked with wide eyes.

I'm honest to a fault. Suffice to say, that wasn't the answer I gave. Fortunately, my wife is forgiving to a fault which is why instead of making me spend the night on the couch, she completely let the subject drop two minutes later.

My point is: even though you used a particular song because it means a great deal to you, you cannot assume that it will mean the same thing to the person reading it. Maybe you think James Blunt's You're Beautiful is the most romantic song ever written while those of us with taste and working ears find it to be one of the most obnoxious, annoying douchey love songs ever in heavy rotation.

Seriously, if someone says "I love You're Beautiful," I completely write that person off as a non-entity.

The odds of this happen going up with the popularity of the song you chose. Pick a Top 40 hit from a few years ago and some of us might associate it with a girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, a fun trip with friends, that horrible semester of college, anything. If the music really truly fits the moment, maybe it can overcome that.

But if you're just throwing it in for the hell of it, maybe you're doing more harm than good. Maybe you're inviting the audience to project too many of their own emotions onto the film. A good filmmaker knows how to manipulate that effectively and take advantage of it. A bad filmmaker picks completely the wrong song and runs the risk of pulling their audience right out of the film.

Don't put a song in a film because it's your favorite song - do it because it's the right song and no other song would suffice.

Reader mail: passive protagonists, genres to avoid, and music

Jake writes in with an interesting question:

My writing partners and I have written a heist script where the protagonist's main flaw is that he's too passive. Of course, by the end of the screenplay he's arced into a much more assertive character who's driving the plot.

The problem is that in the first act he's... you've guessed it, passive.

My basic question: does passivity ever work as a character flaw, or should our protagonist be driving the action, even in Act 1?

This is another call that's hard to make just off the short description. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few films with a "passive in Act One" protagonist.

Star Wars - Yeah, you heard me. Luke spends a lot of time whining about wanting to leave, but he doesn't actively pursue that until his aunt and uncle are killed. That's, what, 45 minutes into the film? R2-D2 does all the heavy lifting of moving the story forward until that point. After all, if it wasn't for R2 going out at night, Luke would never go after him and thus never meet Obi-Wan and even then, it still takes a push to get him going.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - As either Roger Ebert or William Goldman pointed out long ago (and I could have sworn Emily Blake discussed recently), Cameron is the real protagonist of the film. He's the only one with an arc. And guess what? He's dragged around by Ferris for the first act, until the gang finally heads downtown.

Rocky Balboa - I love this movie, but Rocky really doesn't do anything in the first act. It's all about establishing the state of his life, showing us why he eventually will need that final bout.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin - Seriously, what does Andy do to try to lose his virginity in the first 30 minutes? Does he try to change anything in his life in the first 30 minutes?

I'm sure there are more examples I could come up with if I tried. I think the key is that the film has to establish the main character's "Need" or "Goal" in the first act. Even if they're not actively working towards it, we need a firm sense of what they have to overcome in order for the story to end.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin is probably the best example for your purposes. Right off the bat we learn that Andy's "problem" is that he's never had sex. Then, he's put into situations where that fact causes conflict. We see he has trouble relating to guys during a poker game sex talk and how awkward he is with women in other situations. We don't see Andy trying to solve the problem but we absolutely are shown that the problem MUST be solved.

Since passivity is your character's flaw and you say that by the second act he's become more active, my hunch is that you're on safe ground.


No It's Just a Spaceship (love the name) sent me this email question:

Just as theatre is currently swamped with improvised films, musicals based on the same films, zombies, and parodies of popular TV shows, I'm sure there's plenty of scripts you essentially read over and over. Would you consider sharing, say, the ten most overdone genres/topics of the moment? I'm imagining teenage vampires, conspiracy films, and Avatar rip offs are quite popular right now.

This is going to sound funny but I'm less annoyed by the same concepts than I am by unimaginative executions of those concepts. I've probably read hundreds of slasher horrors. 90% of them had to be utter crap, and yet oddly I'm not burned out on those because every now and then I come across a good one that actually is that much more impressive for the failures that surround it.

Rip-offs of The Hangover are actually more in vogue than Avatar ones, at least as far as my submission pile. And again, the problem isn't that the writers are playing in the raunchy comedy territory, it's that they really don't have a story to go with it. They think that sending four guys on a wild episodic chase through Vegas is enough to sustain a movie, particularly if there's room for an anal sex gag involving a stripper, and possibly a moment where the guys end up in a (gasp!) gay bar and somehow end up performing on stage.

But if there is an overdone genre I'm bored to death by it's the "morally conflicted hitman gets into trouble on one last job." It's usually written like it'll be a low-budget action fest and plays like a mixtape of the first draft of every scene that Tarantino ever wrote. The funny thing is that this concept is so prolific, but it's not like there's been a recent mega-hit in that genre. There hasn't been a studio-killing flop, so it's not "radioactive" either, but it's funny that so many writers are drawn to that.

At the end of the day, guys like me are going to be looking for scripts that we can take to our boss and say "This will make you money." It's not like we are only looking for films that can be easily compared to the current Variety weekly Top-Ten box office listings, but we're going to want something that has an audience. Yeah, it sucks to read yet another rom-com where the couple that's meant to be is somehow about to marry the wrong people, but it doesn't make us any less likely to recognize a good example in that strip-mined genre.

If you're a great writer, don't worry that there are 100 other guys sending out scripts dealing with similar concepts. Strong writing rises to the top, so don't let that stop you from writing that teenage vampire movie, so long as you've got something to say with it.

Having said that, here are genres I see a lot of that no one should waste their time writing. They're not necessarily the hot ones "in-town," but I see these scripts over and over again from unrepped and hip-pocket writers:

Anything Holocaust or WWII related.

Hell, anything that can be described as "period" at all.

Expensive sci-fi films, particularly those with complex mythologies.

The aforementioned hitman trope.

Any film where the comedy is based around a straight guy pretending to be gay.

Any porn-related comedy. Porn isn't as funny as you think it is, assclowns.

Political films that are a thinly-veiled criticism of Bush-era policies. (Been working on this script for three or four years, have we?)

The disaffected quarterlife reflection on how your life (oops! I surely meant to say "the main character's life") isn't what they thought it would be, and how no one will hire them, no one will sleep with them and even their friends are a font of depression. When I read a script like that, I'm often reminded of one of Dennis Miller's best lines before he went all right-wing and unfunny: "There's nothing in the world more interesting to me than my orgasm, and nothing less interesting to me than yours!"

Dylan asks:

My question is what's your take on the putting songs in a script. I'm NOT talking about songs like music in: blah blah blah, but more of things like our character would listen to. Say for example he's riding in his car singong along to his favorite song or even just listening to it. Isn't that ok because the writer is showing us another side to him whereas when you say music in you're putting music in the directors decision area (granted it's all up to the director in the end). Just wanted your take on it.

I'm going to share with you the moment I understood why 50% of the audience loved (500) Days of Summer and 50% of the audience hated it. Ten minutes into the film, there's a scene where Joseph Gordon-Levitt have their first real conversation, in an elevator. And what do they bond over? Music.

This is just my personal taste, but I hate hate hate hate scenes that are basically two twentysomethings saying "Omigod! You like [obscure band that establishes my quirky, anti-mainstream street cred]?! So do I! Let's make out and then have wild sex to a Warner Records-approved soundtrack!"

I think it's a little played out. Granted, this might have something to do with the fact that the first words out of anyone's mouth when discussing Garden State were "It has such a great soundtrack." And look, I went through my Natalie Portman phase, but if she ever told me that listening to the Shins would change my life, I'd be looking for a quick way to escape the conversation and try to find a less vapid girl to converse with.

Sorry... you hit a sore point.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing really wrong with the scenario you suggest. I'd just caution that it comes with all the other pitfalls of any pop culture related scene/discussion - it's might be too self-indulgent, too proud of its own cleverness, or feel too much like the writer shoe-horning his own tastes into the script just for its own sake.

Don't NOT do it because I said so, but don't be surprised if some grump like me reacts to it as described above.

When to capitalize and underline

Mark writes in:

Time and time again, I am told not to include CUT TOs, musical artist names, word capitalizations, underlining, and the various other gimmicks professional screenwriters use to make their screenplays more engaging and readable, and yet, time and time again, I see these things used in spec. screenplays that have been optioned or sold or are making their rounds in Hollywood, including those by previously unproduced or unknown writers. What gives? Should these things be in a spec or not?

Hey Mark, good question and a relevant one for me this week actually.

First, I'd dispute the notion that CUT TOs, capitalizations, and underlining makes a screenplay "more engaging and readable." Often it does the exact opposite. "CUT TO" is one of those redundant directions if you think about it. If you're changing scenes, a cut is presumably going to be involved, right? I just read an egrigious misuse of CUT TO just this week. The writer not only had an average of four or five of them a page, he also put them in the left margin instead of the right. By p. 30 just the sight of a CUT TO made my eyes bleed.

The same goes for capitalizations and underlining. If you use them at all, use them sparingly. Here's a good rule of thumb - anything that makes the script harder on the eyes is bad.

WHICH is easier TO READ? A sentence WITH A LOT of capitalizations and LOWER CASE WORDS - plus some UNDERLINING.... (OOPS! Blogger APPARENTLY won't LET me UNDERLINE!)

Or a more conventionally written sentence that rarely employs those gimmicks, if AT ALL, and only for emphasis?

Yeah, I know the old rules used to say to capitalize every sound effect, prop, action, or motion. That's generally not done as much anymore.

As for musical artist names and the names of specific songs, I say don't do it. This is one of those "rules" that is bent on occasion, but writing "As they kiss, Feist's 1234 crescendos" will just make you look like an amateur. Now, I've actually read a few scripts recently that were centered on garage bands, which naturally meant a number of scenes where we were told the band was playing The Ramones, Bon Jovi and a few others. Technically the correct way to do this would be to say, "They play a rock song like Livin' on a Prayer or Born to Run." I'd say that as long as it's clear that this song could be swapped out for another song without affecting the plot, go for it.

What you don't want to do is have a scene where we're told that an Avril Lavigne song comes up on the jukebox at a particular time, and then inform the reader in an aside that this song also inspired your plot. (Yes, I have actually seen this.)

Basically, if it's easy to tell that you've been dying to put this "awesome" song in a movie and wrote the scene just to do that, we'll probably peg you as a clueless newbie. Programming anything more than two songs sets this alarm bell off in a big way.

Before I get a bunch of emails citing exceptions, I'll point out that good writing trumps all. No one ever got a PASS because they capitalized one too many sentences or dared to put "More Than a Feeling" in their spec. (But seriously, are you clueless? That song is nearly a million to license!) But you'd better be a damn good writer, because if you pull that stuff you pretty much burn any goodwill from the reader.

And usually the people who break these "rules" break them frequently. As I said, even though they have their place in screenwriting, they should be used SPARINGLY. The fools who specify outrageously expensive songs tend to list five or six specific songs; those who like to use underlining to draw attention to the point then use it every page, to the point where its value becomes meaningless, and so on.

Yes, guys like Tarantino can turn their work in scribbled in crayon on the back of a placemat and it'll still be treated better than the most perfectly formatted newbie script. But an aspiring screenwriter who commits a major writing no-no and then complains "David Koepp did it, nyah!" is really missing the point.

It's not surprising when some first-timers make these mistakes out of ignorance. They just haven't done their homework - even though some of this stuff is pretty basic. However, if you know that there are certain rules, why fixate on figuring out all the minute exceptions and how to break them?

Bottom line, ideally you won't put them in a spec. If you do, make sure it doesn't pop up enough that your reader goes, "Again? Have they ever read a screenwriting book?"

By the way, as I was typing this, I found a recent post dealing with capitalizations from Scott over at Go Into The Story. I don't agree with him 100%, but it's worth noting what he says about a selling script and a shooting script

Visual mix-tapes ala "Garden State"

Those who remember my post a while back about "How Not to Use Music" and my dislike of Garden State should have a pretty good idea of why I find this funny.

My Mother's Red Hat w/Alicia Silverstone & Alanis Morissette from Alicia Silverstone

Nice to see Alicia Silverstone is still working.

How not to use music

At age 18, I came up with an idea that would eventually lead to my first feature-length screenplay, and I owe it all to Phil Collins. As I was driving in the car one evening, “In the Air Tonight” came on the radio and though I’d heard the song hundreds of times before, it suddenly struck me that it would make a great soundtrack for a movie scene. The creepy foreboding chords of the beginning made for a great contrast with the famous crescendo drum beats that signal the climax of the song. Immediately, I went home and scribbled down the opening scene of a horror film beat for beat, synchronizing certain actions to the song, with the final brutal attack coming at the aforementioned beats. “Oh yes,” I thought, “This is the scene that will have everyone talking.” When I got around to writing the script, the first lines that appeared were “We hear ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins.”

(At the time, I was unaware that Miami Vice had already used the same song in a famous sequence. What can I say, I was culturally illiterate.)

And if I could reach back in time, I’d grab that 18 year-old hack by the throat and tell him there were few dumber things he could do than that. First, the rights to licensed music costs money. A lot of it. So let’s say a producer buys a script with one or more licensed songs that have been made integral to the plot. What happens if the rights holder decides he doesn’t want that song to appear in your movie? Or what if he holds you up for a lot of money? Because of the fear of situations like this happening, it’s generally understood that screenwriter’s shouldn’t list specific songs in their scripts. Sometimes you can get around this by saying “A song like ‘My Way’” but in general, it’s best to just avoid the issue altogether and not name songs. Above all else, never name a song that is irreplaceable in the context of the film. Don’t have everything building up to your cast singing a karaoke cover of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” as the resolution to the plot.

(The same basic principles apply to using movie and TV show clips in your script. Think long and hard before making the call that your lead character must be watching Jaws or Star Wars on camera.)

Why is this important? Because breaking this rule is another one of those mistakes that marks you as a clueless newbie. Once a reader has made that call about you, it’s a short hop from that to “PASS.” Remember, in this business, there’s no real risk attached to saying “no,” while there might be a slight risk at pushing for a script that your boss ends up thinking is trash. Why gift-wrap your reader a reason for saying no?

And while we’re on the subject of music in movies, I have to say I’m getting tired of seeing movies where the soundtrack seems to have determined the scenes rather than vice-versa. Guys like Cameron Crowe and Quentin Tarantino have made some really cool musical choices in their movies, but the unfortunate side effect has been a lot of upcoming screenwriters who seem to be writing scenes so they can include their favorite songs in films. Good music doesn’t make a good script, and in fact, almost seems like lazy storytelling when the songs become a crutch.

Or to put it another way – isn’t it suspicious that the first thing anyone seems to say when Garden State comes up in conversation is “What a great soundtrack!” Speaking as someone who read about fifty Garden State knockoffs, each with their own indie-emo soundtracks, all I can say is: turn off the iPod.