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Our illustrious writers joined us for a Power Lunch in CybersSpace.
We met at the end of phone lines, we spun through gigabytes of digital intelligence and crunched and modulated through modems. The result was very tasty andfulfilling and yet, we hungered for more.

Power Lunch in CybersSpace is our continuing series of candid, insightful, expert and experienced discussions by prominent screenwriters on subjects that writers really want to talk about. From the mundane to the sublime.

Our gathering of writers had plenty of light to shed on everything. Screenwriters Online wishes to thank them for their wit, wisdom and time.

We hope you enjoy Part I (The Entre') Part II is in the next issue. And its not all dessert.

Please join us for Power Lunch in Cyberspace. Your table is waiting.

Jim Hart:
("Bram Stoker's Dracula","Hook","Mary Shelley's Frankenstein",
"Muppet Treasure Island")

Joan Tewkesbury:
("Nashville", "Thieves Like Us", "Old Boyfriends")

Tom Schulman:
("Dead Poets Society" Academy Award Winner, Best Screenplay)

Insider:
How do you challenge yourself as a writer and still stay commercial?

Amy Holden Jones:
I think movies are A mass medium, and if you write for movies, you have to always be commercial. I think I'd have A hard time being challenged from A project that wasn't commercial as I was writing a movie; because paintings are flat and movies are mass entertainment. I try to make things I write about very complicated and personal to me, but always within a genre or context that has a potential for pleasing a large audience.

Insider:
How do you know when your on the track of pleasing a large audience?

Amy Holden Jones:
I think it takes a long time. When I look back at ideas that I had when I started this 15 years ago, I think that I had many ideas that I thought were commercial and that in fact, they weren't. I started with more personal things and made independent movies which I myself directed. I think they were always moderately commercial, but they were inherently small; however, the first films were made for Roger Corman and one was blatantly commercial, a picture of Roger's that I directed and only rewrote. The other I wrote for myself to direct. He taught me a very valuable lesson. He said you could make a movie about just about anything as long as it had a hook to hang the advertising on. It had to have something you could sell. I guess I have to tell you as a screenwriter, I think it's irresponsible to expect people to make something that is extremely difficult to sell. There is so much money involved and somebody puts up that money and has the right to expect they'll get it back.

Tom Schulman:
Was it Carl Rogers who said, "that which is most personal is most general?" I think that maybe applies to this. For me, you have to sorta assume that whatever you're working on-if you can make it accessible to others-that it will in some way be commercial. It may not be "Star Wars" but it will connect with an audience. For me, the challenge is always to identify what it is that I'm working on-to look inside myself and find what's really behind what I'm working on and then somehow find a way to communicate that in the piece. Various levels of commerciality will sometimes obscure that. If you're working on a story about a mad bomber, it may be hard to find what is about your hero that's personal to you. But I think if you dig, you can find that somewhere buried in the piece is a personal issue. You can help, to some extent, bring that to the fore, and then you're writing about something that is both commercial and personal. I think that what you're always trying to do is blend those two things.

Joan Tewkesbury:
I often wonder if I'm still staying commercial or not in this day and age. Basically, I have to write a first draft for myself, whether it's a spec script or an assignment. I really have to have a sense of being able to put it down on my terms; and then, I am completely happy to take whatever notes you have to give. But I don't turn in ten pages at a time, or fifteen, or any of that. I have to throw it at the wall all at once. Usually what happens is that I will get some sort of image in mind and I usually write from an image, whether it's a photograph or a sense of place or whatever it is. But it comes from that initial image before I can ever start a screenplay. The other thing I do is, I take a class every Monday night and I have done so for about the last ten years. It is simply a class where we are given assignments. We write for 40 minutes and we read what we have written and we go home. That's how I challenge myself as a writer.

Jim Hart:
The first thing I would take issue with is use of the word commercial. Part of the problem with screenwriting is finding your own mythology, finding your own voice. I think too many screenwriters try to be commercial as opposed to being accessible. I never set out to be commercial, at least not consciously am I aiming at any kind of commercial product. The challenge as a writer is to write things that interest you and may not interest anybody else that you talk to on the phone for a year. That's the challenge. To write what you know, write what attracts you, write what you believe in, write your own mythology. Basically find that material which speaks to you and has a certain truth. Forget about whether it's commercial.

"Dracula" took me 15 years. "Hook" took me 10 years.
"Frankenstein" took about two hours. The things I'm working on now are projects that have taken years to reach a point where you could do them. So, I don't like the word commercial.

Jim Hart:
Hollywood doesn't make commercial movies. The audience makes the movie commercial, or successful. I think any time you see a manufactured, so called commercial movie it tends to sound like every other thing that's out there. I challenge myself every day by doing things nobody else wants to do.

Insider:
It's interesting you say you try to write things nobody on the phone would be interested in; but, at the same time your scripts still are made. What do you use to connect with what you like in a project and get other people interested in what you're interested in? How do you do that?

Jim Hart:
It's very difficult. Usually you have to write the script. The studios and the studio executives have their own agendas. If they decide as a writer you fit their agenda, they will shovel you all the stuff they want to make. And this is true even at the agency level. The projects that the agents will submit to a studio to make are often very different from what the studio asked the agency to help them package or put together. There is a real big gap between what a writer wants to do and what the studio wants them to do. Usually you end up having to write the script or get the script written. Then they say ,"oh, that's what you meant, that's what you're going to do". Or the movie gets made and it's a big success so they think maybe for an hour you know what you're talking about. It's very difficult to get somebody across the table who's a buyer to see something they don't want to see.

Insider:
But at the same time, you've written "Dracula" and "Frankenstein", obviously even if it clicked with them, but didn't completely click with them. I'm sure they had things they were concerned about or problems. How do you feel about that when the studios say, you either change this, or we don't like this, when they have no idea what you went through to write this. How do you get those two things to coincide, what you want and what they want out of a script?

Jim Hart:
I learned a great lesson from Coppola on "Dracula". Because "Dracula" was a, and I don't want to use the word comeback; but, he used it to make a commercial picture, and I had written the script totally independent of him. I'd actually written "Dracula" as a cable TV movie. That's the best I could do. That's one way. I got somebody to finance my lifestyle at the TV level in order to get "Dracula" written.

I didn't give up on it not being a big feature. We finally found a place for it. Once the script was written it was apparent that it would never be a cable TV movie and it began to have a life of its own. Francis gave me a great insight as to when you are dealing with studio executives and the studios' needs and wants as opposed to the director and the writer and their wants, and that is that, you listen. You take very seriously what they have to tell you, what they like and what they don't like. You use it a barometer to gauge where you are in your process of writing the screenplay, or where your material is. Then you agree with everything they say then you go off and do whatever you want to.

But you don't go into those situations confrontational, combative, and ready to just put on the gloves. I have a reputation for being difficult. I just had a very funny meeting where my producer announced to the studio executives that this was a rare privilege because I usually end up eating studio executives for lunch, spitting them out for dinner. So I was given a great send off, but that's not they way it should be. It should not be confrontational.

What you have to do is pick your battles and have points in your script you can give in on, that you're willing to let go of.

Insider:
But over all, don't you find that frustrating that for you to get what you want, you are looked upon as a problem person.

Jim Hart:
Yes it is a problem and it is frustrating, but at my age now and having the gray beard that I have, and where I am in my career, I kind of like having at least some kind of reputation. Usually when people end up working with me, they find out that I'm not that difficult, that I am very collaborative and I just care a great deal about the material. I've become very proprietary about what I do. It's not enough to say, we don't like this, they have to tell me why.

Insider:
How do you arrive at creative solutions when you're blocked? Is there an exercise or a trick you use to let you know you're on track?

Amy Holden Jones:
It depends on what you mean in terms of block. It think the biggest block you have is coming up with the first idea for the movie.

Insider:
You don't put on a piece of music or walk at the beach?

Amy Holden Jones:
Sometimes I walk away. The script I'm directing now, "The Rich Mans' Wife", I was probably blocked on it for about three years. I got the first act very quickly and loved it. No matter what I did, I could not go on. I wasn't sure where the story went. It was an original for myself so I had the luxury of just putting it away. Every six months or so I'd bring it out, work again on the first act and try to advance. Sometimes I'd get forward 5 or 10 pages, sometimes I'd do something I had to throw away. The process of rewriting is somewhat how I think. The idea I finally had, which broke the block, was an understanding of what the plot twist was. The plot could not advance after the first act originally because in a way, the movie was over. I had to understand what I was missing, the motor that I was missing that would make the story go. Usually when you have a block, it's because you've lost the motor of the story. You have to go not a little ways back, but a long ways back.

Jim Hart:
Be careful about using the word blocked; because, I don't think any writer gets blocked. I think they may be running out of solutions. But you are never facing a blank page and not able to fill that blank page up. You might delete it 30 seconds later, but you're not blocked. I use music a lot, but the main thing I do is stop writing and go do something else.

Insider:
Like what?

Jim Hart:
Play golf. Ride a bicycle. Go to another movie. Go read a book. Go work in the yard. Go to the mall. Anything to get away from writing so that your mind is freed up. Usually the solutions come to me when I'm not writing.

Insider:
Are you actively thinking while you are playing golf or going to the mall?

Jim Hart:
Well yes, you're always thinking about it, but you are not sitting at the computer staring at the screen trying to come up with a solution. It's secondary because you have to concentrate on driving your car down the road and not smashing into the school bus. So you are constantly on the material but you are not sitting at the desk staring at the beer saying, I've got to solve this problem. That does more damage than good.

Insider:
The converse of that is someone who writes and it's really flowing and you feel you just don't want to stop. Are you that type of person or do you have more of a schedule that you stop at a certain point, or do you keep going till the momentum runs out?

Jim Hart:
The other solution is, don't write that scene, skip over that scene. Write two or three lines on what the scene is supposed to be about, what you want to accomplish and move on. Then you'll come back to that scene later on. That's one of the things I do when I'm on a deadline or a schedule crunch or on a roll. I'll know how the scene has to fit into the spine of the piece and what it needs to accomplish, but I may not know what the scene is. So I'll say, "hey this is the scene where the guy says to the girl I lied to you, or, I love you. This is where the monster comes to life but we don't know how", and go on.

Insider:
How about you Joan?

Joan Tewkesbury:
It's very interesting because I will often use a particular kind of music that is used for every script that I write. "Nashville" was written to Bach. I just finished writing a screenplay about Eleanor Roosevelt. I went and bought all of these Glen Gould records that have just come out and she was written to Bach. As a dancer it was the music that would unlock the door so that you could take your technique and soar with it a little bit. So it is the same thing with the writing. The other thing I do is a lot of reading.

Insider:
What kind?

Joan Tewkesbury:
If it's research on a particular project, obviously I read everything around it so that you are steeped in the history of time and place and all of that. But the most creative solution for me is to go there, to be there, to stand there, to be inside the space where these things are going to take place. That is a huge way to get over any kind of block for me. If I can't go there and find something that is it's approximate kind of time and space, or something that will approximate the situation, even if it's in the 18th century and I find something in the 21st century, there is something about the way the space is used, or the way the light is used that is tangible and I can get my hands on that will often solve the problem. The other trick I use is just to get in the car and go sit in a restaurant and listen to other people talk and realize the whole world doesn't center around me and this stupid project. I start writing in a restaurant because there is life going on.

Insider:
And you do that to this day?

Joan Tewkesbury:
Oh yes, it's very comforting. It's almost like sitting, and I never had a mother like this, sitting at some great mother's house in the kitchen this whole family life is going on and you are part of it.

Insider:
Tom?

Tom Schulman:
I tend to take walks. Sometimes, I'll sit down and just flip to a blank piece of paper or a blank screen on the computer and just start writing anything that pops into my head and just let my mind wander. Sometimes I'll read, but I'll try to read material that has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm working on. In fact, I'll intentionally do that, and I'll find that while I'm reading, my mind is wandering back into the story and finding solutions for me.

I'll also lay down on the floor and take about a five or ten minute nap. I'll set my alarm on my watch and just drift off for ten minutes and oftentimes wake up before the alarm goes off with the answer, with the solution to the problem. I think that in all these methods it's just a way of relaxing and stopping the grind and just letting your mind go. And the solution will come.

In Woody Allen's biography, he mentions how he will go to bed for the evening while still thinking of a structural problem he's having. Then when he wakes up the next morning, he discovers that his subconscious has worked out the problem for him.

I think what happens is I'm sitting in front of the computer screen and I'm trying to find a solution to the problem. It's not coming and I'm slamming my fist on the desk and going "where's the answer to this?" and I'm pacing and I'm doing everything I can. So I'm consciously involved in trying to solve the problem and then I just go "alright, forget this for a second, lie down on the floor, relax, take a nap." And then I just drift off, and all of a sudden I wake up and go "ahh, of course." That and walking. I'll take a walk and get distracted; my office is near the beach, so there's plenty to look at down there. I'll just walk around there or walk around the neighborhood.

Suddenly, in the middle of thinking about nothing in particular, the answer leaps out. I mean, there's so much conscious effort that you can do, and then you finally give up. And oftentimes giving up is the way to let your mind relax and find solutions for you.

Insider:
But what happens when you're up against a deadline and you don't have the time to let your mind relax?

Tom Schulman:
Before I attack a draft, I will always make a list of all the things I'm going to do. I try to do it like, "on page 4, I'm gonna do this; on page 12 I'm gonna do that; this whole section needs this." And it'll be sometimes 4 or 5 pages of notes like that.

I almost look at it like a multiple choice test. I'll start with the first one, and if it's easy to do, I'll do it. If I feel like I'm stuck, or I'm not clear on what I want to do, I'll just go to the next one. And I go through and in a few hours I'm done with half of it. And then I go back and attack the next easiest group of things that I couldn't do the first time. Then I'm done with 3 quarters of the material. In the end, I'm done with maybe 95% of it. My mind has read through all these problems and notes. I've read through this many times so I know what I've got to do, and so while I'm working on one thing, the answers will come to me with the others. It's just a way of letting the unconscious work while you're also consciously working on something else.
Insider:
Everyone wants to know, what's the proper relationship between a writer and an agent. This is a question that goes right to the heart of how a writer markets themselves. So many writers think they want to write a script and it's great. You give it to someone. That should be it. What is the relationship?

Amy Holden Jones:
I think it is a very crucial decision who you get as an agent. At the very beginning it can be complicated. If your script is a hard sell, you may not have that many choices. You may just have to go with whomever will represent you.

But if you have a script that several people want to represent, then you're going in and actually making a choice. From my experience I think writers breaking in do better with agents who are breaking in, usually at a big agency. They're hungrier, they work harder. They are looking for clients who are somewhere at the same level they are in the business. When I was breaking in and went to interview larger agents, I found that they considered they were doing me a favor. That's not the position you want to be in.

I have a great relationship with my agent. I love him as one of my best friends, Barry Mendel. He's actually even younger than I am. He just works very hard, and worked very hard from the beginning. He was the assistant of another agent who was my agent. When that agent left ICM and went to UTA, I stayed with Barry because Barry had worked so hard for me. He really jump started my career in a way at a certain point where I was between directing and writing. He helped me move back towards writing after directing.

Insider:
So you accept his criticisms of your scripts and so forth. His opinion really matters to you if he says the third act isn't working.?

Amy Holden Jones:
Yes his opinion matters. But his opinion doesn't matter more than other people. After you finish a script, everyone has an opinion and you have to be careful. I usually give a script to 4 or 5 close friends. I listen to all their opinions and only if I hear the opinion repeated by more than one person, do I pay very much attention to it. If everyone tells you you're drunk, sit down. But if one person tells you you're drunk, maybe you can keep on going. You have to have an opinion yourself and be careful about taking opinions.

Insider:
Did it take you awhile to get the confidence to know that your opinion mattered as much as anybody else's about what you're doing, or even more.

Amy Holden Jones:
No, I'm completely arrogant about that.

Insider:
You are? But you have to have that.

Amy Holden Jones:
I think writers have the opposite problem. They're too arrogant about their opinions when they start. They think they are right no matter what. They don't listen to anybody and that is a terrible mistake.

One of the big things you have to learn is who to listen to and when; and, you can't listen to everybody. The only rule I know is that when you hear the same thing coming from many different places, it's the truth and you should pay attention. If you listen to nothing, you will never make it in the business because screenwriters have to adapt constantly to what other people want. They have to keep a line on what they want to do, but they have to try to do what they want to do in the context of what the studio, the directors, the actors want to do. If you don't adapt, you'll be fired and you'll be gone.

Tom Schulman:
I have always had and wanted an agent whose critical opinion I value. Not just their commercial opinion or opinion as to whether the piece will sell but who can say, "this is working and this is why it's working and this area is not working." Someone I can trust that way, who would just be a person who I would give it to read even if they weren't my agent.

I think that's very helpful to have. And yet, you also want an agent who, if you say "look, I don't agree with half the things you said," they still say, "these are just my opinions and if you don't do them, I'll still try to sell your piece."

Insider:
Is it your responsibility to sell yourself or should the agent be relied on to do that?

Tom Schulman:
It depends on what stage of your career. I think when you're first starting out, you almost never can find an agent who will sell you. There's certainly exceptions to that, but I found that to be the case.

I had to be my own best salesman. I had to know everything that was going on in Hollywood that I could, and have the ideas about who might or might not be interested in my piece, and guide my agent in those directions, even if he disagreed. But lately, anyway, once I became more established as a writer, I was able to find an agent who knew a lot more about what was going on and who might respond to my work better than I did. I don't have to be as on-top of it anymore.

Insider:
But can't it be difficult when your agent has one agenda (sell) and you have a different one (personal issues, themes, etc.)?

Tom Schulman:
My agent knows that in the long run if he puts me or my material with people who don't share my passion for the story I'm writing or don't see eye-to-eye with me on what we're doing-that is, a producer who only looks at it from a commercial point-of-view whereas I'm really looking for something else-that I'm going to be unhappy.

So my agent is very much in-tune with my desire to hook up with producers and studios who are in-sync with what I'm about and what my stories are about. I think that's to some extent a kind of self-fulfilling venture anyway.

The material will find people who, for the most part, are interested in the themes that you're trying to get out there. That's certainly not always true, but I also think that my agent makes available to me introductions to a lot of people and guides me. But in the end, he lets me choose who I feel are the right people for me to be working with.

Insider:
Joan, how about you? what defines a good working relationship between a writer and their agent?

Joan Tewkesbury:
Communication. Usually, if you aren't laughing at the same things, something is wrong. For me a lot of these relationships are about a sense of humor. If we don't like the same movies or jokes or books, there is no point in it. Jane Sindell has been my agent for a thousand years. She was my agent when she was at ICM. Now she is at Creative Artists. But it has been about my ability to talk to Jane and say I don't want to do that, and no I won't do that, and I'm dying to do this, and I know it's hard for you to get me that job, but please try. I don't call on the phone and scream and yell. These are people I go to dinner with and have a friendship with over a long time.

Insider:
That's very fortunate.

Joan Tewkesbury:
I am very fortunate. Kevin Cooper was that way. He's now gone, but Tony Etz has replaced him. I would say that these people will always be in my life in some form or other. I value the fact that they take the time to read the material.

They read it quickly, they call back. They say these are going to be the problems. Basically, they support you in what you do.

Insider:
So then you never had to approach writing as a sense of how to market yourself. Although, maybe you did in a way because you wanted to direct; therefore, you became a writer.

Joan Tewkesbury:
But you see I was very fortunate because I came into it through Altman. I came in with a job because he needed someone to adapt a book, Thieves Like Us. He knew I could write fast and he knew that I was used to adapting books for the theatre. I got to come in without having to do what lots of other people do in this industry. I'd had to do it as a dancer. I'd had to go out and make my bones that way. I think if you make your bones period, whether you're a plumber or a drummer or whatever, you at least know the drill.

Insider:
You've done the roundabout.

Joan Tewkesbury:
Exactly. It's the dance.

Insider:
Jim, do you feel you have to market yourself or is that the agents job to sell you as a writer?

Jim Hart:
It's the same as a catch-22 question. I'm very fortunate with the two agents that I have who work with me very closely. It does take awhile to find a rhythm with your agent. I've had the same agent for 10 years, from 1980 to 1990. Then in 1990 within the same agency two other agents came on and sort of joined me for "Hook" and "Dracula" effort and really believed in the material. I think the main thing you're going to look for in an agent is communication. The agents job is not to get you jobs. That's your job. The writers job is to get jobs. The agents job is to present their material, and expose them in any way they can to those parts of the business where they think they can make a sale, or they think it fits this writers personality or what they think this writer is qualified to do.

Everybody wants to get an agent. An agent gets you. If the agent doesn't get you, you don't want that agent. Communication is the great issue and both my agents are aware of this. We do a great deal of talking on the phone and communication before we do anything.

Insider:
How helpful are your agents when you have finished material. You say you show it to your wife, how much input do your agents have?

Insider:
One of my agents is probably a literary agent in disguise, because he gives notes that rank right up there with the people I trust the most. The other agent is an extraordinary negotiator and sees the big picture of the business. I don't seek out his input for notes. He gives them occasionally and they are good, but I don't seek them out. I would not trust the agents input on my screenplay because the agent has a different agenda which is to make the sale. Agents are not there basically to be critics. They are there to facilitate the making of motion pictures by putting talent together with talent and a script together with a director. I don't say that as a criticism; but, it is a business where everybody has an opinion on your screenplay from the taxicab driver to the security guard to the studio head. Everybody in the business reads screenplays. I give mine to my kids.

Cappucinos came, We fought for the check, the elves picked it up and we rolled off our modems into a snowy cybernight where phone tones echo'd like sleigh bells that jingled ad infinitum into the night..