Order Paul's book, Rewrite - The Second Edition, from Michael Wiese Productions here.
Dave Watson: Thanks for taking the time to meet as I gather you are in the middle of your latest film, The Wedding Dress.
Paul Chitlik: Actually, I just finished what I’m hoping to be the final cut. Had to re do the color correction and remix to bring the music up, but I think I’m done. Going to submit to festivals now and see what happens.
DW: So I appreciate your time and want to talk about your book, Rewrite—the second edition. Is structure as important as character? Do the two go hand in hand?
PC: With characters, we have to be interested. We don’t have to like them, but they have to be interesting. We go to the movies to see people. But movies have to have a structure so that we can see characters in context. Otherwise, we can’t make sense of them.
DW: In your book you write about a central emotional relationship.
PC: There has to be one.
DW: It can be small, but necessary.
PC: We go to the movies to be moved, and the things that move us most are relationships. If you don’t stir an emotion, you’ll lose your audience. We want to laugh, cry, care, and say “Aw.” Movies are a catharsis to viewers, and they want to be moved to tears. Think of how many times people saw “Titanic.”
DW: Some people saw it over ten times.
PC: Absolutely. Now, for structure, there are three arcs going on in a story. First is the plot arc. Second there is a relationship arc, and third is the character arc. The relationship and character arcs definitely have to resolve, and this is the climax. We could go back to look at You’ve Got Mail for an example.
DW: There you have two of the most likable people of that time, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
PC: Yes, and the B-story is her little bookstore trying to stay in business and whether his bookstore will expand and take over. In this, as in almost all romantic comedies, the A-story and the B-story are switched, so the A-story is the relationship story and the B-story is the “plot,” which in this case, the bookstores.
DW: So even with the stakes moderately high, we care about these characters. The flip side to being moved to tears is anger and violence. You think that fits here too?
PC: You bet it does. Adults need to act out, like kids, but adults know how to control themselves. Of course they’ll think about the guy who cut them off in traffic or the boss they want to beat up, but we control it. Getting back to the A-story – the plot; and the B-story, the central emotional relationship, there’s You’ve Got Mail with its two stories, and we could go way back to His Girl Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
DW: With Howard Hawks directing.
PC: Yes, Howard Hawks who had everyone talk twice as fast as normal. We have the B-story where the killer escapes, but the A-story is whether the protagonist played by Cary Grant will become open to equality in a relationship. His goal is clear – to get back together with the Rosalind Russell character.
DW: That always struck me as one of his more rigid roles.
PC: Yes, absolutely. We don’t really care about the B-story, as the A is the more interesting one.
DW: Do character arcs still matter on, say, a much, much larger scale? I saw Transformers years ago and it had a romantic arc in the middle.
PC: Sure, look at Armageddon. It’s about Bruce Willis’s relationship with his daughter and whether Ben Affleck is good enough for her. When Willis first meets him, he doesn’t like him. The asteroid may hit the earth, but Bruce Willis’s allowance of Affleck to be with Willis’s daughter is the human story there. And take a look at John Carter. Do you remember the central emotional relationship in that film?
DW: Not really, no. They seemed focused on creating other worlds, which can be really important in sci-fi.
PC: It can, but if there’s no central relationship, it won’t really succeed as a movie. I saw the recent Star Trek movie and it was all about Spock and Kirk.
DW: That is what, their tenth Star Trek movie? In a way they’ve gone back to or stuck with their roots.
PC: And it’s all about their relationship.
DW: I recently saw the American Masters series on Mel Brooks and one of his co-writers, Andrew Bergman said one of the keys to Blazing Saddles is that the audience feels that Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder really care for each other; we’re not surprised to see them ride off into the sunset. Speaking of roots, you started in theater. Did you find that you’ve applied what you learned there to working in TV and film?
PC: I actually didn’t write much theater. I spent my young adulthood as a journalist and novelist. Then I wrote a couple of one act plays. I eventually submitted one of them to an agent, who recognized I could write for television, and so it began.
DW: You bring a wide variety of experiences to your work, from your travels to being a journalist, translator, teacher and administrator. You also served on the School Facilities Committee of Burbank, overseeing the rebuilding of the city's schools for ten years, nine as chair.
PC: Where did you dig that up?
DW: Don’t worry, I didn’t contact some secret file. And I saw you served as President of Project Chicken Soup, an organization that provides kosher meals to people with HIV/AIDS. Does social consciousness automatically feed into your work?
PC: I hope it does. There certainly are themes that emerge in my work.
DW: What about your current project?
PC: The film that I just finished, The Wedding Dress, deals with a family heirloom dress that passes from generation to generation. It starts with an American Jewish soldier in London in 1944. The English were somewhat anti-semitic at the time. The soldier falls in love with a woman, and her mother strenuously objects, and they never marry. But they have a daughter. The movie’s second act is IN Berkeley in 1967. The daughter is now a lesbian and wants to get married to her partner.
DW: Very timely.
PC: For today, it is, but back then it wasn’t. No one even thought of that possibility then. It doesn’t happen for her. Act three of the film is that same woman in her sixties; she has a protege who is thinking of getting married. The older woman convinces her protégé not to be proud and ask her undocumented immigrant boyfriend to marry her. It may be too late for our central character, but she still wants to see the promise of the dress fulfilled. The story raises the question of how the society around you affects your love relationships and how, if you are truly in love, sometimes you need to fight society to be together.
DW: You still work with the University of Barcelona and Chile’s film development program. The Chilean film No was quite interesting.
PC: Interesting film with a great ad campaign. I’m recently back from Venezuela where I judged a film festival and gave a workshop sponsored by the State Department. I also taught a seminar last summer at Cuba’s film school. Very interesting experience.
DW: Wow, you’ll be our ambassador. And I figured you speak Spanish.
PC: Yes. I went to college for a year in Spain and lived there another year after leaving grad. School.
DW: As much as I want to hear about your international experiences, let’s get back to your book. You have a section on dialogue called “Text, subtext, and no text.”
PC: Well, dialogue is what people remember. Take The Wizard of Oz. Everyone remembers some lines such as “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” and “…and your little dog, too.” Or take Casablanca with, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Writing dialogue is the hardest part, and sometimes directors and actors will cross out the description. On the set, things change – the set doesn’t necessarily fit the description, or there’s a cut for time, or the blocking doesn’t work, so directors tend to work out their own actions. Often, only the dialogue remains, mostly.
DW: You also have a chapter called “Paring it down” on script length. We’ve heard and read about standards, but why can’t scripts be longer than the standard 110 to 120 pages?
PC: Because I am not Frank Darabont. The Green Mile was a 185-page shooting script! Seriously, your first script has to be a certain length. I can guarantee you every successful screenwriter wrote a first script to industry standards, then when they make it big, they do whatever they want. Like Bob Orci or Alex Kurtzman whose movies have made $3 Billion at the box office in the last six years. Aaron Sorkin is notorious for writing long scripts. It’s okay for them. They’re established A-list writers. I’m not, nor are most members of The Writer’s Guild, not to mention new writers. So we have to follow industry expectations.
DW: I recently saw The Newsroom, the first episode only, and it felt very much like an Aaron Sorkin project and I imagine they cut some scenes out. It’s supposed to be hectic as it’s a day in the life of a newsroom.
PC: His first draft could’ve been 100 pages. Then they would read it, cut it down. Shoot it, and cut it further in the editing suite.
DW: Is finishing a script one of the hardest things to do?
PC: It’s hard to know when a script is done, and most often you’re wrong about when it’s done. You might feel really, really good about your script, show it to someone and you get a note saying that it is no damned good and you have to go back and rewrite it. I showed a film once to a colleague who quietly suggested that we meet for lunch. So a few days later I took him to lunch and he told me all the things I had to fix in it. He screwed me big time, but in a good way!
DW: You strike me as open-minded. As a collaborator and director.
PC: As a director you have to be. You’re dead if you aren’t. You have to work with all sorts of people: writers, cinematographers, and actors. I always listen to actors. If they’ve done their homework, they can contribute so much! If they haven’t, you know right away.
DW: I understand you’re working on a new project for television, so I appreciate you taking the time to talk. My last question: what is your favorite cinematic moment? Was there one that inspired you to write and create films?
PC: I don’t really have a favorite cinematic moment or a “Hey, I want to make movies” moment. Closest to it would probably be the moment Dustin Hoffman breaks into the church in The Graduate and stops the wedding. Powerful. I thought, “Hey! I could do that!”
The Graduate Clip
Dave Watson is a writer, educator, editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.
Dave Watson: Thanks for taking the time to meet as I gather you are in the middle of your latest film, The Wedding Dress.
Paul Chitlik: Actually, I just finished what I’m hoping to be the final cut. Had to re do the color correction and remix to bring the music up, but I think I’m done. Going to submit to festivals now and see what happens.
DW: So I appreciate your time and want to talk about your book, Rewrite—the second edition. Is structure as important as character? Do the two go hand in hand?
PC: With characters, we have to be interested. We don’t have to like them, but they have to be interesting. We go to the movies to see people. But movies have to have a structure so that we can see characters in context. Otherwise, we can’t make sense of them.
DW: In your book you write about a central emotional relationship.
PC: There has to be one.
DW: It can be small, but necessary.
PC: We go to the movies to be moved, and the things that move us most are relationships. If you don’t stir an emotion, you’ll lose your audience. We want to laugh, cry, care, and say “Aw.” Movies are a catharsis to viewers, and they want to be moved to tears. Think of how many times people saw “Titanic.”
DW: Some people saw it over ten times.
PC: Absolutely. Now, for structure, there are three arcs going on in a story. First is the plot arc. Second there is a relationship arc, and third is the character arc. The relationship and character arcs definitely have to resolve, and this is the climax. We could go back to look at You’ve Got Mail for an example.
DW: There you have two of the most likable people of that time, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
PC: Yes, and the B-story is her little bookstore trying to stay in business and whether his bookstore will expand and take over. In this, as in almost all romantic comedies, the A-story and the B-story are switched, so the A-story is the relationship story and the B-story is the “plot,” which in this case, the bookstores.
DW: So even with the stakes moderately high, we care about these characters. The flip side to being moved to tears is anger and violence. You think that fits here too?
PC: You bet it does. Adults need to act out, like kids, but adults know how to control themselves. Of course they’ll think about the guy who cut them off in traffic or the boss they want to beat up, but we control it. Getting back to the A-story – the plot; and the B-story, the central emotional relationship, there’s You’ve Got Mail with its two stories, and we could go way back to His Girl Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
DW: With Howard Hawks directing.
PC: Yes, Howard Hawks who had everyone talk twice as fast as normal. We have the B-story where the killer escapes, but the A-story is whether the protagonist played by Cary Grant will become open to equality in a relationship. His goal is clear – to get back together with the Rosalind Russell character.
DW: That always struck me as one of his more rigid roles.
PC: Yes, absolutely. We don’t really care about the B-story, as the A is the more interesting one.
DW: Do character arcs still matter on, say, a much, much larger scale? I saw Transformers years ago and it had a romantic arc in the middle.
PC: Sure, look at Armageddon. It’s about Bruce Willis’s relationship with his daughter and whether Ben Affleck is good enough for her. When Willis first meets him, he doesn’t like him. The asteroid may hit the earth, but Bruce Willis’s allowance of Affleck to be with Willis’s daughter is the human story there. And take a look at John Carter. Do you remember the central emotional relationship in that film?
DW: Not really, no. They seemed focused on creating other worlds, which can be really important in sci-fi.
PC: It can, but if there’s no central relationship, it won’t really succeed as a movie. I saw the recent Star Trek movie and it was all about Spock and Kirk.
DW: That is what, their tenth Star Trek movie? In a way they’ve gone back to or stuck with their roots.
PC: And it’s all about their relationship.
DW: I recently saw the American Masters series on Mel Brooks and one of his co-writers, Andrew Bergman said one of the keys to Blazing Saddles is that the audience feels that Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder really care for each other; we’re not surprised to see them ride off into the sunset. Speaking of roots, you started in theater. Did you find that you’ve applied what you learned there to working in TV and film?
PC: I actually didn’t write much theater. I spent my young adulthood as a journalist and novelist. Then I wrote a couple of one act plays. I eventually submitted one of them to an agent, who recognized I could write for television, and so it began.
DW: You bring a wide variety of experiences to your work, from your travels to being a journalist, translator, teacher and administrator. You also served on the School Facilities Committee of Burbank, overseeing the rebuilding of the city's schools for ten years, nine as chair.
PC: Where did you dig that up?
DW: Don’t worry, I didn’t contact some secret file. And I saw you served as President of Project Chicken Soup, an organization that provides kosher meals to people with HIV/AIDS. Does social consciousness automatically feed into your work?
PC: I hope it does. There certainly are themes that emerge in my work.
DW: What about your current project?
PC: The film that I just finished, The Wedding Dress, deals with a family heirloom dress that passes from generation to generation. It starts with an American Jewish soldier in London in 1944. The English were somewhat anti-semitic at the time. The soldier falls in love with a woman, and her mother strenuously objects, and they never marry. But they have a daughter. The movie’s second act is IN Berkeley in 1967. The daughter is now a lesbian and wants to get married to her partner.
DW: Very timely.
PC: For today, it is, but back then it wasn’t. No one even thought of that possibility then. It doesn’t happen for her. Act three of the film is that same woman in her sixties; she has a protege who is thinking of getting married. The older woman convinces her protégé not to be proud and ask her undocumented immigrant boyfriend to marry her. It may be too late for our central character, but she still wants to see the promise of the dress fulfilled. The story raises the question of how the society around you affects your love relationships and how, if you are truly in love, sometimes you need to fight society to be together.
DW: You still work with the University of Barcelona and Chile’s film development program. The Chilean film No was quite interesting.
PC: Interesting film with a great ad campaign. I’m recently back from Venezuela where I judged a film festival and gave a workshop sponsored by the State Department. I also taught a seminar last summer at Cuba’s film school. Very interesting experience.
DW: Wow, you’ll be our ambassador. And I figured you speak Spanish.
PC: Yes. I went to college for a year in Spain and lived there another year after leaving grad. School.
DW: As much as I want to hear about your international experiences, let’s get back to your book. You have a section on dialogue called “Text, subtext, and no text.”
PC: Well, dialogue is what people remember. Take The Wizard of Oz. Everyone remembers some lines such as “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” and “…and your little dog, too.” Or take Casablanca with, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Writing dialogue is the hardest part, and sometimes directors and actors will cross out the description. On the set, things change – the set doesn’t necessarily fit the description, or there’s a cut for time, or the blocking doesn’t work, so directors tend to work out their own actions. Often, only the dialogue remains, mostly.
DW: You also have a chapter called “Paring it down” on script length. We’ve heard and read about standards, but why can’t scripts be longer than the standard 110 to 120 pages?
PC: Because I am not Frank Darabont. The Green Mile was a 185-page shooting script! Seriously, your first script has to be a certain length. I can guarantee you every successful screenwriter wrote a first script to industry standards, then when they make it big, they do whatever they want. Like Bob Orci or Alex Kurtzman whose movies have made $3 Billion at the box office in the last six years. Aaron Sorkin is notorious for writing long scripts. It’s okay for them. They’re established A-list writers. I’m not, nor are most members of The Writer’s Guild, not to mention new writers. So we have to follow industry expectations.
DW: I recently saw The Newsroom, the first episode only, and it felt very much like an Aaron Sorkin project and I imagine they cut some scenes out. It’s supposed to be hectic as it’s a day in the life of a newsroom.
PC: His first draft could’ve been 100 pages. Then they would read it, cut it down. Shoot it, and cut it further in the editing suite.
DW: Is finishing a script one of the hardest things to do?
PC: It’s hard to know when a script is done, and most often you’re wrong about when it’s done. You might feel really, really good about your script, show it to someone and you get a note saying that it is no damned good and you have to go back and rewrite it. I showed a film once to a colleague who quietly suggested that we meet for lunch. So a few days later I took him to lunch and he told me all the things I had to fix in it. He screwed me big time, but in a good way!
DW: You strike me as open-minded. As a collaborator and director.
PC: As a director you have to be. You’re dead if you aren’t. You have to work with all sorts of people: writers, cinematographers, and actors. I always listen to actors. If they’ve done their homework, they can contribute so much! If they haven’t, you know right away.
DW: I understand you’re working on a new project for television, so I appreciate you taking the time to talk. My last question: what is your favorite cinematic moment? Was there one that inspired you to write and create films?
PC: I don’t really have a favorite cinematic moment or a “Hey, I want to make movies” moment. Closest to it would probably be the moment Dustin Hoffman breaks into the church in The Graduate and stops the wedding. Powerful. I thought, “Hey! I could do that!”
The Graduate Clip
Dave Watson is a writer, educator, editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.