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So, you want to write for Hollywood. Good for you.
A lot of you are asking yourselves "What should I write?" Well, if you're asking yourself that, what you should write is an apology letter to every creative person in town. Writers write. Everything they see is a potential story. Every person they meet is a potential character. Little things in our lives become little parts of our creations. Writers don't have to think about what they should write. They can't help themselves.
These are some of my DON'Ts:
Don't do that thing where the pretty foreign girl tells her American suitor that her name means "Beautiful" in her native language. This is contrived and predictable. What the hell else is her name going to mean? Toe Fungus? Besides, if her name means "Beautiful" in her home country, that's the same as someone in Ohio naming his daughter Beautiful. "I'd like you to meet my daughter, Beautiful. Yeah, we knew she was going to be beautiful, so we just named her Beautiful. This is my other daughter, Nice Personality."
While we're on the subject of names, don't name your lead character something cutesy that'll end up being a play on words via the title. If you're writing about a disastrous weekend mattress sale and your script is titled Sale of the Century, don't name your character Tom Century.
Parody is Hollywood's version of natural selection. Just like a limping antelope gets removed from the wild by a hungry lioness, when something in entertainment gets lame, parody will move in, strike swiftly, tear it to shreds and put it out of its misery. Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and Scary Movie drastically curbed the market flooding of westerns, sci-fi, blacksploitation, growing up in the hood and teen scream flicks respectively. If it's reached the point of parody, you better be doing something new with the genre for anyone to take it seriously. And, don't be afraid to watch some good parodies for a built-in guide about what not to do.
Last Action Hero was supposed to signal the much-needed demise of the "You killed my father/brother/wife/child/dog/hamster/career and now, it's personal" movies. A personal touch can go a long way to helping a story unravel, but when it comes to a hero bringing down a bad guy, it doesn't have to be personal. If it is personal, it surely doesn't need to be boldly declared by the lead character.
Gratuitous sex scenes are a thing of the past, thanks to the burgeoning porn industry. No one is going to run out to see a movie just because a pretty actress is getting steamy under the sheets in a darkened bedroom and you catch a side glimpse of a breast - not when you can rent a video where eight gorgeous actresses are completely naked and making those Girls Gone Wild tapes look like Sunday school. Sex in mainstream movies should be different than what we get from porn. In Bring It On, there were locker room scenes with fresh-faced young ladies changing in and out of cheerleader uniforms. Porn cheerleaders look like they were built in a naughty factory out of silicone and thongs. It's hard to buy into the innocent cheerleader fantasy when the pretty college co-ed peels off her sweater to reveal a tattoo of a dragon across her back and pierced nipples.
Don't worry about offending anyone. Everyone has gone through their own personal tragedies, and everything ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING offends someone. And, if you're intentionally going for offensive, you might be surprised at how few people are really and truly offended.
Don't use that pseudo-sexy move where someone is coming on strong and gives their hotel room key to the person they hope to hook up with. Hotels don't give you spare keys to carry around and hand out to bimbos and boy toys. If that person decides not to show, you're gonna be paying for a new key. If he/she does show, all they'll find is an empty room because you gave them your key and now you're locked out. And, while we're on the subject of keys, try to find a more creative way to build pressure besides having your character drop the keys as the bad guy closes in and then unlock the door at the last possible second. Seen it - see it coming.
If you're pairing up two characters who don't know each other, find another way to put them together besides "Hey, you can't leave me here. I can help you. You'll never find what you're looking for without me." We've seen it a million times, and it's ridiculous. If I were tied up with barbed wire and I knew that cyborg bikers were going to peel my skin off, I'd say pretty much anything to get the guy I just watched bust loose help me break free.
Yes, fat people are funny, but the joke where they order a bunch of fattening food and a diet soda is played out. "Yeah - I'd like a yak carcass deep fried in bacon fat, a triple banana split - can you substitute bacon for the bananas? Thanks. Oh, and an order of cheese fries with bacon bits on top. To drink? Diet Coke." Saw that coming? So will your audience.
Don't use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a portrayal of poverty. Poor people can't afford peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A small jar of peanut butter is $4.19, jelly is $2.49 and store brand white bread is at least 99 cents on sale. Anyone struggling in Hollywood knows that poor people eat Ramen noodles.
Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't full of DO's. As I've said before, what works for one may only work once. Still, there are some signs of encouragement (which we all need to fuel us) that I use to tell me I'm on the right track.
The easiest way to know that your ideas are worthy is to see someone else come up with the same idea after you - and completely independent of you - and bring it to the public. Small comfort, since that leaves me without any payoff, but it is the best encouragement I could possibly ask for. I have a nowhere-near-finished Judge Dredd script that I stopped writing after the Sylvester Stallone movie came out. I have recently halted work on my King Conan script since finding out that the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian had the same idea (the legend of Conan is that he would one day become "king by his own hand"). Two of the four movies I've dreamed of remaking (12 Angry Men and Planet of the Apes) have been updated. I even wrote a TV pilot about a producer making reality TV shows, and now reality TV is huge. Of course, I didn't write about people voting each other off an island - my story was about gang members locked up in an arena, battling to the death while cameras broadcast it to America.
I must be on the right track. I just need to get to my destination a little quicker.
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