SCREENWRITERS ONLINE MASTER CLASS

WITH

RAYMOND DE FELITTA

www.screenwriter.com, insider@screenwriter.com

RAYMOND DE FELITTA,

WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER CITY ISLAND

CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING TRANSCRIPT



Mark, Raymond De Felitta, Tony

@ Screenwriters Online

Raymond De Felitta, Writer/Director/Producer

City Island

Mark Host: Please welcome Ray De Felitta to Screenwriters Online!
debbiebb: Thunderous applause Ray!
Katie1973: Welcome, Ray!
debbiebb: Woohoo!
debbiebb: Welcome from Chicago!
Screenmoderator: Welcome Ray!!!
BradfordR: Ray! Welcome from Philly!
ajaxaspen: Welcome from the desert!
valli: Hi Ray!
Ray De Felitta: Hi everyone. Buenas noches.
PamSonicx: hi Ray! from Toronto!
BradfordR: Oh great is this gonna be in Spanish?
Ray De Felitta: Spanglish, Brad.
PamSonicx: no, in Icelandic.
BradfordR: ; )
BradfordR: Spangtalian
Ray De Felitta: Dig it.
Ray De Felitta: I'm all for Spangtalian.
PamSonicx: with a French accent
Screenmoderator: Hey folks!
QUESTION:
*debbiebb* Thanks so much for coming tonight, Ray! How did you fall in love with the movies and find your way to CITY ISLAND?!!
Ray De Felitta: Two-part answer.
Ray De Felitta: Full disclosure: I grew up in show business, which makes you think it's not anything glamorous, but just a business you can enter.
Ray De Felitta: Having said that, I learned a great deal from my father, Frank De Felitta,
Ray De Felitta: about writing and filmmaking as I grew up watching him do it.
Ray De Felitta: When I was 12, they made a movie of one of his novels.
Ray De Felitta: It was called AUDREY ROSE.
Ray De Felitta: It was directed by Robert Wise (SOUND OF MUSIC, etc.).
Ray De Felitta: And he let me watch him shoot the whole film one summer at MGM.
Ray De Felitta: And that's how I learned to make a film, basically.
Ray De Felitta: I went to college, but decided to study writing since I'd already learned kind of how to make a film.
Ray De Felitta: But my whole mission was to become a complete filmmaker.
Ray De Felitta: I never wanted to concentrate on one craft, writing or directing.
Ray De Felitta: In a sense, I wanted to become a literary filmmaker.
Ray De Felitta: So then I went to the AFI, and I was in the directing program but I also wrote my own short films there.
Ray De Felitta: And when I got into the second-year program and got to make a half-hour thesis film, I made a film called BRONX CHEERS.
Ray De Felitta: And it rather strangely got nominated for an Academy Award in 1991, strange because you just submit your films and no one thinks you'll get one of those five nominations.
Ray De Felitta: One morning, you just get a phone call: "Congratulations! You've been nominated for an Oscar."
Ray De Felitta: I suddenly had a great many new friends, most of them at CAA.
Ray De Felitta: And then my real nightmare began.
Ray De Felitta: Because I had been following my own path this whole time, which had brought me to this Oscar place.
Ray De Felitta: And I was expected to quickly abandon it to do what everyone else "knew" I should be doing.
Ray De Felitta: And they very well may have been right.
Ray De Felitta: But I ultimately don't think that any director or writer or artist can ever follow anyone else's advice.
Ray De Felitta: You have to find your own path, and that explains the next 20 years of my life.
QUESTION:
*debbiebb* Thanks, Ray! I so love CITY ISLAND - the movie and the script! Are you a clam-digger or a muscle-sucker? :)
Ray De Felitta: Muscle sucker!!! Thank you. And if you're interested, here's how I got to CITY ISLAND.
Ray De Felitta: I was writing a movie about a family in the Bronx.
Ray De Felitta: The story was pretty much the story that wound up being told in the movie.
Ray De Felitta: And one weekend, the NY Times published an article about City Island, which I'd never heard of even though I lived in New York.
Ray De Felitta: I went to visit the place and was floored by how unusual it was and how little it looked like the Bronx.
Ray De Felitta: And yet it was a very vivid piece of the New York landscape.
Ray De Felitta: I thought that nobody had ever shot it before.
Ray De Felitta: And that I could claim it as my own.
Ray De Felitta: And I was only partly correct because people have shot it before, but not as City Island.
Ray De Felitta: They pretend usually that it's New England.
Ray De Felitta: You can shoot anything there... except the Bronx.
Ray De Felitta: No one will buy it as The Bronx.
COMMENT:
*debbiebb* I love that, Ray! The setting was perfect for the story!
QUESTION:
*BradfordR* Raymond, why do you think your stories resonate with audiences?
Ray De Felitta: My question back would be, Why don't they resonate with more audiences?
Ray De Felitta: I think I write stories that anyone can relate to.
Ray De Felitta: In some ways, one of my filmmaking heroes, Mike Leigh, has said this about his films: I don't think I make art films. They call them art films. I think I make films about people's lives.
Ray De Felitta: I think my films are about life that anybody can understand, and yet the ghetto you exist in to make them is the art film world, and it's hard to get them distributed/seen that way.
Ray De Felitta: I actually really appreciate the question being phrased that way.
Ray De Felitta: It makes me feel good about it, but it's generally not how people regard my work.
Ray De Felitta: If your films make huge amounts of money, you get to make a lot more films.
Ray De Felitta: CITY ISLAND has helped me a lot, and that's fine. I'm not complaining.
Ray De Felitta: I'm just saying that in the world we now live in, if you're not a blockbuster, you're not a hit.
QUESTION:
*PamSonicx* Can you tell us about how the financing and casting came about?
Ray De Felitta: Every film I've made has been financed by private equity.
Ray De Felitta: I've never had a company or studio behind me.
Ray De Felitta: That means that for some reason, what I'm trying to say is something that the people who have the money can relate to.
Ray De Felitta: It's like patronage.
Ray De Felitta: It's not, again, how I meant to be doing this, but my idea was always: do what you have to do to get your work done.
Ray De Felitta: So with CITY ISLAND, I got a movie star who believed in me as a patron would.
Ray De Felitta: Andy Garcia joined me as a partner, but his investment wasn't financial.
Ray De Felitta: It was his name and star power that helped us get the film going.
Ray De Felitta: He read the script.
Ray De Felitta: He loved the part.
Ray De Felitta: He said, “How do we get this made?”
Ray De Felitta: His initial thought was, I can send it to all these studios.
Ray De Felitta: I said, Go ahead, but I doubt that's how we'll make this movie.
Ray De Felitta: I think we'll have to team up and create the groundswell.
Ray De Felitta: What he offered, which was really great, was a big phone book.
Ray De Felitta: He said he'd call all of his actor friends, including Alan Arkin and Emily Mortimer.
Ray De Felitta: And that's what you need.
Ray De Felitta: Whether your patron is financial or creative, you need people who love it.
Ray De Felitta: We don't look at it as a profit-based thing. We look at it as art.
Ray De Felitta: When you get somebody involved and that changes the nature of the scope of your project, all of a sudden, a lot of other people—agents, producers, etc.—will say, “Now your movie is interesting to me. You did great. Can we do better?”
Ray De Felitta: Plenty of people will say, “Maybe I can do better.”
Ray De Felitta: And you will almost always fail by doing that, by not staying with your initial instinct or interest.
Ray De Felitta: By trading "up," in other words.
Ray De Felitta: I think that when you find a partner—and in filmmaking, that means an actor, really—you make a mystical bond. You both get this. And if you like each other and you get this, you start on a journey.
Ray De Felitta: Just as you wouldn't want them to suddenly decide your material is too good for you, you wouldn't want to do that to them, either.
Ray De Felitta: It's like the hot girl who suddenly wants you when you're rich.
Ray De Felitta: Going back to the making of the project, Andy and I started getting cast attached.
Ray De Felitta: A number of whom did not wind up in the movie, by the way.
Ray De Felitta: Among them: Marcia Gay Harden, who was going to play his wife at one point; and Chloe Sevigny, who was going to play the part that Emily Mortimer eventually played.
Ray De Felitta: There's nothing unusual in this. It's what happens when you put together a movie.
Ray De Felitta: But we still couldn't get the money behind the movie.
Ray De Felitta: Then an old friend of mine, Lauren Versel, who had been a screenwriter, had recently become a producer.
Ray De Felitta: And she read the script, had some money for another movie that had no cast attached, and said, “I think I can give the money we have for this movie to you guys. It's not enough, but at least it's a start.”
Ray De Felitta: And that started the ball rolling because from there, she got more money at the Berlin film market.
Ray De Felitta: The combination of that cash plus our cast then brought in a foreign sales company.
Ray De Felitta: Then we're 2/3 of the way in, and we can finish with a gap finance loan, which we got from a bank.
Ray De Felitta: And suddenly, you're a movie.
Ray De Felitta: To get a gap loan, the bank has to feel that the rest of your financing is realistic and collateralized.
Ray De Felitta: And the movie has to be bonded, which is complicated for a relatively small movie.
Ray De Felitta: A bond, in this case, is completion insurance for the film.
Ray De Felitta: So we make the movie, but we still don't know what to do with it once it's done.
Ray De Felitta: We assume, like my other movies, that it'll be sold at a festival.
Ray De Felitta: It's a nerve-wracking thing to have to do with your movie, but it's better than trying to sell it to a studio before anyone's seen it because they won't want it at that point.
Ray De Felitta: It's how these films get seen.
Ray De Felitta: You put money aside in your budget for going to festivals, but invariably, you take that money and use it for music cues, and then you're screwed when you get into Sundance.
Ray De Felitta: Which we didn't with this movie.
Ray De Felitta: I've had two other movies in Sundance, and I certainly didn't feel that that entitled me to automatic entrance.
Ray De Felitta: But the investors were more than a little disturbed when Sundance turned CITY ISLAND down.
Ray De Felitta: In fact, the bank that gave us the loan really wanted us to look into DVD sales immediately.
Ray De Felitta: And I had to say, "Guys, we got one turn down. Let's wait for two or three and then sell to DVD."
Ray De Felitta: Because if we sold it to DVD, it could not at that point be released in theaters.
Ray De Felitta: Fortunately, the Tribeca Film Festival felt differently than Sundance, and not only took the film but gave us a really great premiere spot.
Ray De Felitta: The result was we had an amazing first screening, very big buzz, they doubled our screenings (we went from 6 to 14 or something), and then we won the Audience Award.
Ray De Felitta: Better than an Oscar because it comes with a cash prize.
Ray De Felitta: That raised our profile with distributors, but even then it wasn't easy.
Ray De Felitta: We kept hearing that we were gonna get offers from Sony Classics and Searchlight because they were all circling the film.
Ray De Felitta: But we didn't get those calls.
Ray De Felitta: The one company that always called us and said, “We love this movie and we'll get behind it,” was Anchor Bay.
Ray De Felitta: And so, we eventually made the deal with them.
QUESTION:
Screenmoderator: How do you keep your faith up through all the ups and downs of getting a movie shot- film festivaled? What keeps you believing? The fact that you owe the bank?
Screenmoderator: How do keep your sanity throughout?
Ray De Felitta: I consider it such a sick pursuit and one that only a handful of profoundly disturbed people can lay claim to having authority and control over (aka, independent filmmakers) that it is in fact my religion.
Ray De Felitta: To stay optimistic and afloat when all around me, everyone is sinking into despair.
Ray De Felitta: It's my badge of honor to always believe and to impart that to my collaborators.
Ray De Felitta: Plus, I don't know what else to do with my life. QUESTION:
Mark Host: What do you do all day when you're waiting to hear from the financiers, Hollywood, etc.?
Ray De Felitta: Errands.
QUESTION:
*alpine33* Also, how long of a duration was this? Maybe I missed it but it would add to his passion and despair.
Ray De Felitta: CITY ISLAND began as a script that was written in 2001. I can actually date its writing because I began it on Labor Day Weekend, and on the 11th of September, the Towers were hit.
Ray De Felitta: I was on about page 50 and having a great experience writing it, but like many people who experienced that day, I put it down and didn't think anything was worth doing for a long time.
Ray De Felitta: Then I realized I had nothing to offer the cleanup effort, and I had nothing else to do with my professional life, so I decided to finish the script.
Ray De Felitta: It was done at some point that October, but it took a long time to get anywhere after that.
Ray De Felitta: Even though people liked it, people didn't know what to do with it. Is it small? Is it a major actor? Is it a little tiny movie?
COMMENT:
*alpine33* Thank you...incredible, nine years.
Ray De Felitta: Nine years is a lot of time, but in movie time, it's not that crazy.
Ray De Felitta: If someone said you could make your movie in nine years, you'd probably sign on.
Ray De Felitta: I actually made two other movies while I was trying to get this movie made, and I was writing a musical based on one of my other movies.
Ray De Felitta: But the engine driving everything was getting CITY ISLAND made.
QUESTION:
Screenmoderator: once you've written your script, who reads it first?
Ray De Felitta: First, you give your script to your agent. In my case my agent, Lucy Stille. We then went to producers to find one who would like it.
Ray De Felitta: Eventually we found a company who were my first producers though ultimately, that's not who I made the film with.
Ray De Felitta: And we sent it to a lot of actors trying to get someone interested in playing Vince.
Ray De Felitta: But it's hard to get actors to read.
Ray De Felitta: Every filmmaker goes through this loop, this cul-De-sac of buck passing.
Ray De Felitta: Actors don't have a reason to read unless your film appears to be a reality, though it won't appear to be a reality if they're not interested.
Ray De Felitta: So everyone's trying to subvert or defeat that process.
Ray De Felitta: People do it by having personal relationships with actors.
Ray De Felitta: Here's the thing: if you create a piece of work of surpassing quality—and that's what you have to aim for as a writer—you will eventually get read and pushed to the next level.
Ray De Felitta: It doesn't mean your film will get made, but actors will want to know who wrote this.
Ray De Felitta: You can't make somebody make your movie, but if you write something that's so good, it'll rise to the top.
Ray De Felitta: It still works, and it'll never stop working.
Ray De Felitta: Recently, I read a screenplay, and I could tell—and I don't know why—that it was somebody's incredibly good first screenplay.
Ray De Felitta: There was something about the freshness of the writer's voice.
Ray De Felitta: And a movie star is attached to this script.
Ray De Felitta: So I asked the agent who sent it to me if I was right about the writer, and she said yes.
Ray De Felitta: It's a guy from Minnesota, it's his first script, and he mailed it to all the agencies.
Ray De Felitta: And it worked.
Ray De Felitta: It's still the basis of our craft.
Ray De Felitta: Actors are not gonna commit to anything unless it's really great—except when there's a huge check involved.
Ray De Felitta: In a funny way, having actors as your final arbiters is scary, but it's good. They know what they can make work.
Ray De Felitta: What Andy Garcia saw when he read CITY ISLAND was a role that spoke to him personally.
Ray De Felitta: And he had not found that in another piece of writing for him as an actor yet.
Ray De Felitta: I knew within a half-hour of meeting him that he's a lot more like Vince than he is like the cops he usually plays.
COMMENT:
*debbiebb* Vince was the perfect part for Andy! He was brilliant!
QUESTION:
*debbiebb* Thanks Ray! I loved your use of voiceover in CITY ISLAND! Why do you think voiceover gets such a bad rap?
Ray De Felitta: I think voiceover gets a bad rap because more than half the time it's used, it's applied once a film doesn't make any sense and they need to save a film.
Ray De Felitta: So for instance, the infamous BLADE RUNNER voiceover was a case of them not thinking the film would make sense without it.
Ray De Felitta: Whereas VO that works is, from the beginning, a part of the storytelling mechanism.
Ray De Felitta: The greatest VO films, SUNSET BOULEVARD among them, have VO as part of the writer's approach to the story, not something to fix something later.
Ray De Felitta: I use it a lot in my scripts, and I think it's a useful film technique.
Ray De Felitta: You can't use it in a play.
Ray De Felitta: In a way, movies are flashbacks, always.
Ray De Felitta: They've always happened already.
Ray De Felitta: So when you add VO, you're adding a fable element to it, saying, there's a reason why I'm telling you this story.
COMMENT:
*valli* I think the same can be said for CASINO - huge amounts of VO, but it was organic - without it, the audience would still get the movie.
Ray De Felitta: CASINO's one of my favorite movies.
*valli* YAY - mine too!
Ray De Felitta: When CASINO's on TV, I think I'm gonna watch five minutes and I wind up watching the whole thing.
Ray De Felitta: One of the things CASINO does, besides it's VO, is it tells you the inside scoop on something you don't understand but that you always wondered about.
Ray De Felitta: Now that sounds a little simple, but when a movie can show you how something works and do so with authority, it's automatically enticing.
Ray De Felitta: And movies are authoritative—you believe what they're saying.
COMMENT:
*howie* Thanks for explaining VO that way. People always give it bad rap, and I have it in one script but always felt like I was a bad writer cuz I did.
Ray De Felitta: Who are these people who say it's no good? That's my question. If they're professional writing teachers, ignore them.
Ray De Felitta: One of the things you always hear is, Show us don't tell us.
Ray De Felitta: I think that applies in terms of characters within scenes speaking about action as opposed to committing action.
Ray De Felitta: But people misuse that phrase and apply it to VO when, in fact, VO is giving you another layer of what's going on.
*debbiebb* Amen to that, Ray! Thanks!
Ray De Felitta: So I think that it's a matter of writing teachers who confuse various rules, and as a result, scare people away from using perfectly valid techniques.
Ray De Felitta: Probably one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, Billy Wilder, used VO in almost everything he wrote.
Ray De Felitta: And he often broke the rules that he himself established, and didn't care.
Ray De Felitta: For instance, in THE APARTMENT, which I.A.L. Diamond won a Best Screenplay Oscar for, they begin with a lengthy VO monologue from Jack Lemon about his life and who he is.
Ray De Felitta: And that's the last you ever hear from him in VO in the movie.
Ray De Felitta: It sets up the movie in a wonderful way, and it doesn't weaken a thing.
Ray De Felitta: But people will say it should've.
Ray De Felitta: I wouldn't say that you shouldn't use VO because you're trying to break in. There are no rules.
COMMENT:
*BradfordR* Raymond, the subtext within the first 10 pages of CITY ISLAND is captivating. I love how these isolated characters are driven to escape the limited expectations of their birth.
Ray De Felitta: Thank you.
Ray De Felitta: I think all isolated people are driven to do so, but may or may not ultimately escape those expectations.
Ray De Felitta: It's within everybody.
Ray De Felitta: For example, look at SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER.
Ray De Felitta: Travolta's character's life sucks, but at this one place on the weekend, he's king.
COMMENT:
*BradfordR* Exactly!
*debbiebb* Yes Yes Yes!
QUESTION:
*BradfordR* Raymond, Director, David Anspaugh, said the four most important elements of a feature project are, script, casting, original music and Cinematography. Thoughts?
Ray De Felitta: I'd say script and casting are the only important things.
Ray De Felitta: Everything else is a nice thing to have, but not essential.
Ray De Felitta: You can make a great movie with a great story and great actors, and you don't need anything else.
Ray De Felitta: For example, THE CHINA SYNDROME is scoreless.
Ray De Felitta: That said, I think you want everything.
Ray De Felitta: But if you can really afford two, spend it on your script and actors.
Ray De Felitta: Cinematography is the most overrated craft in film.
Ray De Felitta: Not every film needs to be a great looking film.
Ray De Felitta: I know people hate hearing that, but I think cinematography gets fetishized.
COMMENT:
*BradfordR* My Indie-Gorilla spirit thanks you! COMMENT:
Screenmoderator: Oh really? Cinematography is overrated when we're talking about a medium that relies on a LENS
Screenmoderator: The story is told in light and dark
Screenmoderator: and so a FILM requires a great use of lenses and camera position...no?
Ray De Felitta: Lens and camera position are givens.
Ray De Felitta: No director can call himself or herself a director without a sense of where the camera should go.
Ray De Felitta: However, even if they fail at that and have a great story and great actors, they will still have a film that's watchable.
Ray De Felitta: The opposite is not true.
Ray De Felitta: The opposite is a film that you admire frame by frame, and you are not supposed to admire a film frame by frame.
Ray De Felitta: You're supposed to forget that you're watching it as a series of stills.
Ray De Felitta: Not frame by frame, but 24 frames per second.
QUESTION:
Do you spend much time on your cinematography?
Ray De Felitta: I've never had a lot of time to shoot, so no we don't. Having said that, the DP is an enormously important collaborator to me because it's not just about how well lit something is supposed to look.
Ray De Felitta: It's about whether we're making the same movie tonally.
Ray De Felitta: We have to have the same attitude as each other.
Ray De Felitta: I'm by no means poo-pooing the cinematographer.
Ray De Felitta: It's just, as a craft separate from the whole movie, it's something people misunderstand.
COMMENT:
*valli* Ray - I getcha when you say cinematography can be "fetishized", but in COLLATERAL the city was a living breathing character, to me.
Ray De Felitta: Absolutely.
Ray De Felitta: And that's a great example of a movie about characters and acting and story where the cinematography worked with it.
Ray De Felitta: And that's what I think is the thing to be achieved.
Ray De Felitta: To draw an analogy, there are people who listen to their sound system through their music, and there are people who listen to their music through their sound system.
Ray De Felitta: And I am among the latter.
QUESTION:
*PamSonicx* Who are your favorite filmmakers?
Ray De Felitta: W.S. Van Dyke, James Horn, Archie Mayo
Ray De Felitta: Sam Wood
Ray De Felitta: Also, Billy Wilder, Pietro Germi,
Ray De Felitta: George Stevens, David Lean.
QUESTION:
*PamSonicx* How did you get your agent? Have you ever changed agents?
Ray De Felitta: I've had several agents. My most recent is my forever agent. We are partners.
Ray De Felitta: The best way to get an agent is to not try to get an agent.
Ray De Felitta: They have to try to get you.
Ray De Felitta: This goes back to what I was saying about writing.
Ray De Felitta: Do something of such quality that you'll be recognized.
Ray De Felitta: There's no other way into this whole thing.
Ray De Felitta: Let's say you do that.
Ray De Felitta: There are multiple screenwriting competitions all over the world now, and the agencies all read the finalists and winners.
Ray De Felitta: You can't make yourself win, but you must aim to be that good.
Ray De Felitta: To do that, you need to be genuinely excited by your craft, to not just watch movies but read scripts—it's really important to read great scripts.
Ray De Felitta: That'll show you how a great script lives on the page and why it works when people read them.
Ray De Felitta: It's easy to find scripts now on the Internet.
Ray De Felitta: Get the best ones and see how the best writers write them.
Ray De Felitta: In a good script, the movie lives as you're reading it.
Ray De Felitta: You can see it as you're reading it.
Ray De Felitta: The description is brief.
Ray De Felitta: The characters come alive.
Ray De Felitta: The pages turn quickly because you can't wait to find out what happens next.
Ray De Felitta: Those are all things that you know as a writer, but until you see another writer perform them with excellence, you don't really grasp what it is you have to deliver.
Ray De Felitta: A few to recommend:
Ray De Felitta: THE APARTMENT
Ray De Felitta: FABULOUS BAKER BOYS—Steve Kloves' script is perfect.
Ray De Felitta: SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
Ray De Felitta: I also loved Haggis' MILLION-DOLLAR BABY script.
QUESTION:
*valli* Do you like James L. Brooks stuff, like AS GOOD AS IT GETS; SPANGLISH? I think Tea Leoni in SPANGLISH hit that character out of the park, to me.That's where great writing and great acting collide, like you were sayin' script and actors...
Ray De Felitta: I love James L. Brooks' movies. I've never actually read one of his scripts. But I've had a theory for a long time that he is the most underrated famous filmmaker because, I think, he's so wealthy.
Ray De Felitta: He's not quite taken seriously.
Ray De Felitta: When I look at all the movies he's made and the singularity of tone, he's very funny, courageous and personal.
Ray De Felitta: He's a personal filmmaker who happens to have made hundreds of millions of dollars in TV.
Ray De Felitta: So it's hard for people to take him as the former when he's known for the latter.
Ray De Felitta: He's THE SIMPSONS, after all.
QUESTION:
*iris1010* What screenwriting competitions would you recommend here in the states and abroad?
Ray De Felitta: The Nicholl Fellowship is the best known, but there are plenty on the Internet. Google them.
QUESTION:
*PamSonicx* What is your writing process like?
Ray De Felitta: It's increasingly uncomfortable. Fraught with uncertainty and need to finish quickly before I lose all faith and interest.
Ray De Felitta: It's a lot like bad sex.
Ray De Felitta: I usually write some sort of an outline to get started, but increasingly over the years, I depart from it as soon as I start writing.
Ray De Felitta: But it's good to have as a kind of safety net.
Ray De Felitta: That way, I know where I'm going if I get lost.
Ray De Felitta: But really, what I'd rather do is have that underneath me so I can improvise and get to some place better.
QUESTION: Screenmoderator: Eric Roth says he can go anywhere in his writing- change the ending- surprise himself as long as he knows what his premise is
Screenmoderator: - that becomes his north star
Screenmoderator: - that is backbone
Screenmoderator: - do you feel the same?
Ray De Felitta: Absolutely.
Ray De Felitta: I think that's especially interesting coming from someone who's written as much as he has.
Ray De Felitta: The more I write, the more I find I don't want to know exactly how I get to where I go.
Ray De Felitta: As long as I know what I'm trying to say—premise, in other words—I feel confident letting the characters take me somewhere.
Ray De Felitta: In many ways, while I used to hold an outline dear, I feel like more of a grownup writer when I can write free of that and feel confident that the theme or the premise is guiding me.
QUESTION:
What about drafts?
how many before you show?
Ray De Felitta: The thing is, I've never shown anyone a first draft.
Ray De Felitta: My "first" draft is usually my third or fourth.
Ray De Felitta: In general, I don't show anything that I'm not convinced is finished.
Ray De Felitta: I want to have the confidence that I've done something complete, and then when I start to hear comments, I have to take them seriously because I've given the script a good effort.
Ray De Felitta: Beyond my agent, I have a couple of good friends I can show early drafts to.
Ray De Felitta: But they have to be people who you know are rooting for you.
Ray De Felitta: I don't want to show things to people who are simply looking to be tough.
Ray De Felitta: I want them to want me to succeed, so that they bring their comments with a genuine good will.
Ray De Felitta: Criticism can be difficult and exhausting to take if it's not offered in the right way.
Ray De Felitta: I'd rather have a crappy piece of writing and still have a couple friendships in tact than improve the writing at the cost of those friendships.
QUESTION:
*taoj* Can we talk about log lines for a moment? What draws your attention in a log line? The idea or the way it's said or written?
Ray De Felitta: Honestly, I've failed at log lines. My writing doesn't fit into log lines well.
Ray De Felitta: Now people are able to say to a potential reader that they should look at my other movies.
Ray De Felitta: If you can fit something into a log line, it won't be as interesting as something that can't be fit into one.
Ray De Felitta: I'd prefer referencing two movies, i.e., "It's ______ meets _______."
Ray De Felitta: I've never been able to boil down my stories to one line.

PART II OPEN FORUM – GOOD NIGHT

Mark Host: Okay everyone, let's open up the room to Open Forum. On behalf of Screenwriters Online, I'd like to thank Ray for a truly insightful evening.
debbiebb: Standing O, Ray!
debbiebb: Thanks for hanging out with us tonight!
PamSonicx: Awesome! Very inspiring! Thanks, Ray!
jottie: Great evening!
Ray De Felitta: My pleasure.
Katie1973: Thanks so much - very helpful and insightful.
iris1010: Thanks Ray, great information.
alpine33: Great insights Ray!!
Ray De Felitta: I was eating great sushi and drinking good wine.
Swonline: this was terrrific!!!
BradfordR: Raymond! Awesome answers!! Thank you!
valli: You are a real gem, Ray!
alpine33: Wish you the best with your new movie and future ones!
valli: I appreciate your time and insights - thank you!
QUESTION:
*jottie* What are your five favorite movies?
Ray De Felitta: Five favorite movies in no particular order: THE AWFUL TRUTH, SUNSET BOULEVARD, SHANE, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, and MURMUR OF THE HEART
debbiebb: Those are some amazing movies! valli: Ray - I gotta ask - do you like oysters?
Ray De Felitta: Valli, I say oersters, you say oysters.
catsimm: Great great night- thank you for a wonderful session of great film wisdom
BradfordR: : )
Ray De Felitta: Goodnight everyone. Thanks for staying awake. And thanks for your great questions. I really appreciated them.
debbiebb: I really enjoyed the night and City Island!
Mark Host: 'Night all.
Screenmoderator: good night!!
ajaxaspen: Thanks so much ... driving in LA is no small thing.
valli: this was a great night! thanks, Tony!
debbiebb: Night Tony and amazing writers
debbiebb: Woohoo! I loved it!
valli: nite- nite, woohoo girl :)
debbiebb: See you all tomorrow night
valli: sounds good, deb :)
debbiebb: this was a beautiful night
alpine33: Good night! Yes, another awesome night coming up!
debbiebb: yes! alpine I agree
valli: and it will be awesome
valli: a great time with Jeremy Bell!
valli: Wasn't it amazing what Ray said about his writing process?
valli: He didn't give us a bunch of fluffy drivel - I like that!
debbiebb: me too!
debbiebb: and I love VO so I'm glad he thinks it adds an extra layer
debbiebb: I have always thought that if used properly VO is a good thing
valli: oh yeah... used to enhance NOT make the story work - he gave great clarification and why he thought it got a bad rap
debbiebb: it was a great night
debbiebb: a lot of good qs and answers
debbiebb: streaming would be fun in that sense since we could almost be there in a way
valli: lotsa of writing, yes?
debbiebb: Yes.
debbiebb: See you tomorrow valli
valli: yes - streaming could be great - still need the tranny though
debbiebb: lotsa love and hugs
valli: ok - g'nite, woohoo girl ;)
debbiebb: ya I do love that
debbiebb: woohoo!
valli: back atcha
valli: G'nite Tony and Mark - thanks millions for 2 nite! Sweet Sleep when it comes ;)