Write Your Screenplay Podcast Jacob Krueger

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay podcast. This week, we are going to be looking at Alex Garland's new film, Civil War.







Civil War explores what happens when we become polarized, stop looking at each other as human beings and instead view one another as enemies.















Structurally, Alex Garland’s Civil War is essentially built like Apocalypse Now, with a touch of The Last of Us. 







But in the case of Civil War, the characters’ journey into the “heart of darkness” takes place in an America on the brink of collapse, rather than the Vietnam War. The zombie-like tones of Civil War won’t come as a surprise to those who know Alex Garland's work. He wrote 28 Days Later. 







We're going to be talking a bit about the structure of Civil War and it’s similarities to the structure of Apocalypse Now and The Last of Us. We’ll also look at key differences in the socio-political implications of building a war movie by contrasting Civil War with Top Gun: Maverick. (Check out my Top Gun: Maverick Podcast).







One of the interesting choices that Alex Garland makes in the writing of Civil War is not to tell you what the hell is going on. We only have snippets of what's happened. 







We know that a president has stayed in office for three terms against the will of the American people, or at least against the Constitution. 







We don't know exactly how or why that happened. There's virtually zero exposition but we know that has happened.







When we first meet the President, played by Nick Offerman, we suspect he’s making a “disinformation” speech about a victory tha doesn’t reflect what is really going on. 







We know that in this world, in Washington, D.C., the press are shot on sight. We know that the press are seen as enemy combatants by the President. 







That is all we know.







We don't know the President's politics. We don't know if he is left or if he is right or if he’s somewhere in between. We don't know if he is a fascist. We don't know if he is a communist. We don't know anything about his point of view except that he has violated the constitution and he is against journalism. He is against the truth coming out.







We know that America has fractured and that some kind of alliance called the Western Forces (WF) has been created in opposition to The President.







In our society this seems like an impossible alliance. It's between California and Texas. And quite frankly, we don't know what that alliance is about. We don't know their politics. We don't know what they believe in. 







We don't know if they're liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, communist or fascist. But we know that they are fighting against the President, trying to retake the country.







Alex Garland has come under some fire for his depiction of the Western Forces– the fictional alliance of California and Texas– in Civil War.







Some critics have essentially said “This is crazy. This is just ridiculous whitewashing. California and Texas- they're so far apart politically. This choice to imagine them as a combined force is just Alex Garland obscuring of the actual political message to avoid offending anyone.” 







And if you've listened to my Top Gun: Maverick podcast, you know that that's something that I criticized that film for.







In Top Gun: Maverick, like in Civil War, the nature of the political conflict,

As many of you know, every Thursday Night, we host a free screenwriting class called Thursday Night Writes. A recent installment with Steve Molton was so groundbreaking that we decided to release it as a podcast for our whole community. Enjoy!







Jake: Hello, everybody, welcome to Thursday Night Writes! Our guest tonight is Steve Molton. 







Steve is a former HBO and Showtime executive, Columbia film school professor, and Pulitzer nominee. He wrote a movie with Frank Pugliese of House of Cards. He wrote limited series for Showtime. He has worked in television, novels, nonfiction, and film. He’s even penned an opera! 







He's also just one of the great human beings in the world and a good friend. We're so lucky to have him back on our team, mentoring students in our ProTrack program and offering a new TV Drama Writers Room.







Steve and I are going to be exploring the concept of internal antagonists in screenwriting and the role they play in your character’s journey. 







Often, when we're thinking about the “antagonist” or the opposing forces in our script, we think about the “bad guy” or the “obstacle.”







But today, we're going to focus on internal obstacles, things that get in the way of our characters on the inside, and the things that get in the way of us as writers on the inside. 







Steve: Part of the reason I wanted to do this subject tonight is that, having walked the picket line in the last year, we were besieged by the notion that somehow machines will be able to replicate what we do.







But as some great person had written on his sign while picketing, "Computers can't have childhood trauma." 







We are still human beings. The fact that we live and die, that we are shaping the world and must still shape the world, sometimes in ways to protect ourselves, requires us to go really deep. So that's what we’ll do today, working from the inside out.







I've been teaching at the French National Film School, doing a masterclass there for producers. These weren't people who were naturally thinking like writers, although they were storytellers of a kind. 







I pulled together notes from a series of talks I did there on the seven forms of conflict. 















There are seven forms of conflict that drive just about every great story.







Writers have probably heard about the seven forms of conflict. We forget them because they're so common and ubiquitous. They are: 







1) The self versus the self







2) Self versus another 







3) Self versus society 







4) Self versus technology 







5) Self versus nature 







6) Self versus the supernatural 







7) Self versus God, fate, or destiny







The first three of these are present in almost all strong movies and stories. The last four are genres unto themselves, but they often include those three forms as well.







For example, you might find the self versus the self, the self versus the other, and versus society within a movie about the self versus technology. These conflicts are ubiquitous and they flow into each other.







Jake: A question popped up in the chat. What's the difference between supernatural and God?







Steve: That is a fantastic question. 







Self versus the supernatural involves conflicts with inexplicable, otherworldly phenomena that defy scientific explanation.

This week, we are going to be talking about Poor Things, by Yórgos Lánthimos and Tony McNamara. 







You could describe Poor Things as a hyper-sexualized, dark, feminist, Forrest Gump. But what is the movie actually saying? 







How does Yórgos Lánthimos get away with such wildness while still telling a story that is both interesting and commercially successful? How does he both break the boundaries of what we typically think a movie or a screenplay could be, but also invite viewers in?







We’re not only going to be exploring the theme, structure and character development of Poor Things, but also connecting these concepts to profound questions about what holds us back as writers, and as human beings, from expressing our pure voices. 







Along the way we'll look at some of the countless movies that are referenced and twisted in the structure of Poor Things, from Frankenstein to The Wizard of Oz, and hopefully simplify this tremendously complex screenplay by exploring the core thematic oncepts that underlie its structure.















What is Poor Things actually about? What does the story mean? How did Yórgos Lánthimos and Tony McNamara build it as a screenplay? And what can we learn from Poor Things as screenwriters? 







The weirder your movie is, the more you need to understand what you are building. The more complicated your movie is, the simpler its premise needs to be.







Where does this begin in Poor Things? Like all screenwriting, it begins with character. In Poor Things, it begins with Emma Stone's character, Bella.







In order for you to understand the premise of Poor Things, I'll need to give you a couple of little spoilers from the beginning to the middle. I'm not going to spoil it all the way to the end without first warning you.







So here's the premise: God, or Godfrey (Willem Dafoe's character) has attempted to create a woman who has no shame, no past, no history, no external or internal factors standing in the way of just being herself. 







He has attempted to make a girl who is pure voice. 







God is the product of horrific experiments that his father performed upon him. Unlike Bella, he bears the scars of his history on his face and has spent his whole life trying to rationalize them. Bella, on the other hand, bears none of the scars of her history. She is coming at the world with fresh eyes. How has she been created?







I am going to spoil it a little bit more now.







A woman has killed herself for reasons we don't know. Even God, (the character), doesn't know. She has hurled herself from a bridge in the opening frames of the movie. And, as we'll find out later, the stories God has told Bella about her past aren’t true. He’s made up a false history to preserve her innocence and sense of herself. The truth is that God, a brilliant scientist and doctor, discovered the body of the suicidal, pregnant woman from the beginning of the movie, and he has implanted the baby's brain into the body of the woman. 







Poor Things is a Frankenstein story, inside out. 







In this case, the scientist, God, as Bella calls him, is a long, suffering, twisted, deformed creator, who carries the wounds of his tortured past. He's the one who looks like Frankenstein. 







And Frankenstein's monster looks like Emma Stone. She looks like perfection, or, to quote the film's ironic joke, like " what a very pretty retard." 







And she has no past.







Bella has been brought up inside a world that has been cultivated...

This week, we're going to discuss Beef, a fabulous limited series created by Lee Sung Jin.We will use Beef to explore two related and extremely valuable concepts for screenwriters: Game and Escalation. 







Game and Escalation are concepts that we're taking from improv. But as we look at the screenplay for Beef, you’ll see that the same tools used for improv can also be hugely valuable for screenwriters.







Usually, when we think about Game, we think about it as the funny thing in the scene. 







If you're doing something funny, they teach you in improv to do it again. That becomes the Game. 







And Escalation means you don't just want to do it exactly the same way again. You want to do it in a slightly different way that escalates it. You want to keep on building up, up, up, up. 







Now, many people think of Game as a comedy thing.It’s obvious how you might Game if you're writing a sitcom or a sketch. But what if you’re writing a drama? What if you’re doing a historical epic? Do you still need Game? Does Game matter outside of comedy? 







I'd like to suggest that dramas, and limited series like Beef, which mix dramatic and comedic elements, have Game, too, and that understanding Game is vital to writers in all genres. 







Game is also part of the way the audience tells themselves the story of who the characters are, of what's really happening in the story, of how the character is changing or not changing, and of how the character is relating to other characters.







Game and Structure are connected. When you become a master of Game, you also become a master of Structure. When you become a master of Escalation, you also become a master of Structure. So, we will be talking about all of that and more in this podcast.







Note that there will be a couple of spoilers for Beef. But we’re going to limit most of our conversation to the way the pilot is structured so that we can start to understand how Game works and how Escalation works. And I’ll warn you before we get to any major spoilers for the rest of the season…







Now, before we get rockin', there's some stuff I want to talk to you about that is coming up at the studio that is hugely valuable to you. So, if you enjoy this podcast, check us out live every Thursday night for free. We have a wonderful class with hundreds of writers from all over the world called Thursday Night Writes. So I'd like to invite you to join our community, where you can learn for free from me and top members of the Jacob Krueger Studio faculty. 































We discussed the idea that Game is a concept taken from improv. If you are a screenwriter, if you've taken any of our classes, you know that we integrate many concepts from improvisation into screenwriting. 







There’s a good reason for that: because most of what we are doing as screenwriters is improvising on the page.







We are faced, just like an improv troupe, with a blank page. We might have a sense of who our characters are, but we also might not. We might have, like an improv troupe, just a suggestion, a word, an idea, a premise, a hook…  maybe just an image that came into our minds. We have the barest sense of who are characters are. 







The truth is, even if we've done a whole outline and think we have figured out everything,

If you’ve watched the first episode of the Lessons from Sundance podcast, you know that JKS faculty member Christian Lybrook and I recently recorded a series of short form videos for our social media (@thejkstudio) about what you can learn as screenwriters from the films, lectures and documentaries we saw at Sundance. We’ve now compiled them into this two part podcast series, which we think is going to be tremendously valuable for all of you.In this second installment, we’re going to have a treat for you documentary filmmakers, looking at four vastly different documentaries, Nocturnes, (which won Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft), Every Little Thing, Black Box Diaries and Eno.If you’re not a documentarian, don’t worry, we’ll be gleaning lessons from the structure of these films that will be valuable for screenwriters and TV writers of any genre.We’ll also sharing some insights from lectures by Jonathan Nolan and Steven Soderbergh on the art of storytelling, the importance of theme, and the use of research in scriptwriting, as well as script analysis of two very unusual action comedy features, Thelma and Kidnapping, Inc, with a really cool discussion about the use of humor to tackle serious issues in your screenwriting.We’re going to learn about alternative forms of structure, how to build through big and small choices, how to use obstacle and threat in your writing, how to write believable antagonists, how to listen to your characters, how to find a balance between the subconscious and the conscious mind, how to find your voice as a writer, how to find your hook and your take on source material, how to develop hot relationships in screenwriting, form as function in screenwriting, how to use theme, and much much more.There will be some minimal spoilers, but we’ll keep you posted between each analysis so you can skip ahead if you want no spoilers at all.And if you’re listening instead of watching and the sound is a bit different than normal, know that’s because each video was recorded live from a unique location at Sundance to give you a feeling of the festival.We talk a lot in our classes about character driven structure. But how do you find structure when writing movies that aren’t driven by traditional characters, or by characters at all? Let’s jump in and find out with our discussion of Nocturnes, by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan and Every Little Thing by Sally Aitkin.







Nocturnes and Every Little Thing: Approaches To Structure























Jacob Krueger:   We're going to talk about two different documentaries in a way that will be valuable for you, whether you're a documentarian or writing a feature film or TV show. The two documentaries are Nocturnes, which is a beautiful meditation about moths shot in the Eastern Himalayas, and Every Little Thing, which is a story about a woman in Los Angeles who is rescuing thousands of hummingbirds. 







These two documentaries are fascinating, because they're built in the exact opposite way. And we’re going to be exploring how much your take and your premise matters in building a script.







Every Little Thing, even though it's actually about hummingbirds, is built around a traditional character journey. There is a particular hummingbird named Cactus. 







Christian Lybrook: Oh, poor Cactus. Cactus was found with barbs sticking out of her chest. A tiny, baby bird. And Terry, the hummingbird whisperer, it is her goal to get Cactus back out into the world.

Jacob Krueger Studio faculty member Christian Lybrook and I attended Sundance 2024 together, leading to this new series of short videos about the films we saw there, and what screenwriters could learn from them. These videos were first released on our social media during the festival (follow @thejkstudio for future updates). The response was so strong, and the lessons so valuable that we’ve compiled them into a two part podcast series, built around common themes. Whether you’ve seen these films or not, there are so many lessons you can benefit from through these discussions, including how to lean into the emotional logic of your structure, how to control tone, how to surprise genre expectations, how to get the most out of your first image, how to build central metaphors and image systems, how to build mirrors for your main characters, how to write movies about profound socio-political issues, how to build structure through emotional needs and much more…In this episode, we’ll be looking at feature films Your Monster, Layla, A Different Man, and Reinas, as well as Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize winning documentary Porcelain War. 







And for those of you listening rather than viewing… if you notice the sound is a little different in each of these podcasts, it’s because we’re trying to bring the Sundance Experience to you at home, by recording in lots of different locations– from the beloved Egyptian Theatre on main street to the Gondola at the Park City Mountain.The first film we’re going to be discussing is Your Monster, a sweet little Beauty and the Beast inspired– well let’s call it a “Romantic Comedy”-- with some other slightly less expected genre elements that we’re not going to give away. This is a film that moved, inspired, surprised and delighted us. And there’s so much you can learn from it as a screenwriter about leaning into the emotional (rather than the rational) logic of your screenplay, navigating toward the fun, establishing the tone of your screenplay, and squeezing out all the juice from a mash of different genre elements. It’s not yet in theatres, so we’re only going to talk about the opening sequence up to the inciting incident, so there will be minimal spoilers. 















Your Monster written and directed by Caroline Lindy







Jacob Krueger: Your Monster by Caroline Lindy is a relationship story about a girl and the monster who lives in her closet. One of the things that's really beautiful about this movie is it’s not just about her love story with a monster, it's really about a love story with herself.







Christian Lybrook:  It's a “Beauty and the Beast” story. Caroline Lindy takes a story that we're all familiar with and she starts to spin it, looking at it from all different angles: You think it's going to go this way? I'm going to give you something else. And that's a great exercise for us to do as screenwriters. 







Your Monster shows screenwriters the value of leaning into the emotional logic of the story, and navigating toward the fun, rather than getting caught up in the details.







Jacob Krueger: The film primarily leans into the emotional logic of the relationship between the main character, Laura, and the monster in her closet, rather than getting caught up in the “logical logic.” It’s magical realism. There are a lot of elements in the film where, if you get into your logical brain, you could say, Well, hold on a second, how did she get into the theater? How did she get into the audition? How did these things happen? 







And yet, as you're watching the film, you don't care at all. 







Christian Lybrook: My analytical brain, it's loud in my head. And those moments, they did pop up. But the emotional storyline is so powerful that it just sort of dissipat...