Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... (2 page)

Next, he realized many aspiring screenwriters were having great success from the tips and the lessons presented in his first two books and, with their well-received scripts in hand, they were looking for information about “what next?” So from personal insights about agents and managers to getting and interpreting notes and what to expect in meetings, that information is in here as well.

But Blake also realized that with artistic success comes great pressure — screenwriting is a terrifying and exhausting chore on some days, an amazing but challenging career on others — so he gathered crazy tales and helpful advice from working, professional writers that present a realistic but uplifting look at the journey that is “life as a writer.”

That's in here too.

And, most importantly, Blake shares a powerful, heartfelt, and intimate story of the journey that took him from a guy who had lost his creative spirit, had stopped writing and was incredibly lost, to a disciplined, positive, and driven man with a newfound desire to write, write, write. The key to his massive paradigm shift? Blake realized his stubborn, selfish, independent streak was completely ruining whatever positive mojo he might have had, so he dug down deep, reconnected with himself, and began writing from the heart. He started believing in himself again, and hopefully, his story will help you do the same.

With every word it is clear Blake wrote this book because he wanted you to know that when you decide you hate the story you're working on, when you think you've completely wasted the last six months of your weekends and free time, when you realize there's something off in your plot but can't figure out what, that
you are not alone!

He goes out of his way to assure you, if you know in your heart of hearts you want to be a writer, there are many, many preventative and positive ways out of your screenwriting black hole. He wanted you to know he understood the struggle of a creative, inventive soul — that he and his friends had been there, for the highs and the lows of pursuing a non-traditional career path.

And that, in the end, it is all worth it.

To quote the first
Save the Cat!
: This book gives me “the same, only different.” You have the same witty, wise, and kindhearted Blake, with his years of experience and positive outlook, covering a wealth of information that hasn't been touched in any other screenwriting books on the market. Blake's incredible knowledge of both the art and the business of Hollywood is only eclipsed by his infectious, passionate desire to share this knowledge with any-one looking for guidance. I'm so pleased he was able to get all this amazing, inspirational work down on paper before he died.

I wish I could congratulate him in person, but I think he already knew the importance of the legacy he was leaving. This is the stuff that franchises are made of.

No wonder readers were clamoring for more!

We'll miss you, Blake!

Sheila Hanahan Taylor

Autumn 2009

Sheila is a producer and partner of Practical Pictures, known for such movie franchises as
American Pie
,
Final Destination
, and
Cats & Dogs
. She is also a visiting professor and lecturer at various film programs around the globe, including The Sorbonne, UCLA, Cal State, Tokyo International Film Festival, and Cinestory.

Let's face it, if you have chosen a career as a screenwriter, you're asking for a certain amount of pain.

A hint of this happens right up front.

No matter where you come from, what your good intentions are, or how talented you may be, when you even tell someone about the screenplay you're working on, you will invariably get looks.

Just saying “I'm a screenwriter” begs for an “Oh
yeah?
!”

And the question we all hate:

“Is there anything you've written I might have seen?”

The implication here is that if you were any good at this, you would already have something sold and made and playing at the Cineplex. And no, telling Aunt Fern about your YouTube short, or the option by the producer who almost had something premiere at a film festival
near
Sundance two years ago, is not enough.

And that hurts.

If you're like the rest of us who have picked screenwriting as your profession, you get used to it. You must — because you have to. It is
who
you are. It is
what
you are. Like Lee Strasberg as Mafiosi Hyman Roth says between coughing fits in
Godfather 2
:

“This… is the business… we have chosen.”

And p.s. ta hell wid Aunt Fern.

She can barely write her name.

And she smells like cabbage.

That's right, just by checking the box marked “creative” in the list of skills you hope to turn into a profession, you are already in the trouble zone. And it's not just your concerned loved ones
who stand in judgment of the ideas popping in your brain. The entire world at times seems like it's against you.

Why?

Partly because we're just different.

“They” do not get the adrenaline charge we get when we see that a re-struck print of Charlie Chaplin's
City Lights
is playing down-town; “they” do not understand the economic sense behind signing up for the 16 movies per month plan on Netflix; their minds do not flood with quite the same images as our minds do when we hear the words: “Interior, Café, Naples, 1953.”

They are thinking about other things.

Cabbage, for instance.

It's like that skit I saw years ago on
Saturday Night Live
. Bill Murray is Og, the leader of a group of cavemen, strong and dumb as dirt. Steve Martin is the smart caveman, with ideas that might save the tribe. So when Steve goes to sleep by the fire, Bill picks up a rock and crushes Steve's skull, then announces:

“Now Og smart.”

Yup.

Those guys.

They don't mean it personally.

They're just waiting for us to go to sleep so they can crush our skulls with a rock — because that's what they do.

And God bless ‘em!

They need us, and here's a secret… we need them, too!

And yet… the
real
pain starts when something else happens.

We're going along minding our own business, being creative,

running downtown to see
City Lights
, avoiding falling asleep by the fire just in case… and then one day something goes wrong.

The script we spent months on gets rejected.

The idea we thought was brilliant draws blank stares.

The empty space in the finale of our story we thought we'd know how to fill in when we got there isn't filling in.

In fact, the whole caboodle may suck big time.

And that's when the panic sets in.

The icy flush of flop sweat races down our backs.

And a horrible thought creeps into our minds:

Maybe Aunt Fern is right!?

You know what I mean. The real trouble starts not with what others think about us, but what we think about ourselves. The default position most writers have is: “I'm secretly not good at this!” And that is, indeed, not good; that will make us crazy. It takes us away from what we need to do to make it right.

We have to avoid panic, doubt, and self-recrimination.

And just fix it.

We have to get up off the mat… and strike back!

For a while now since writing both
Save the Cat!
and
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies
, I've wanted to address that moment, the “dark night of the script” when it's just you looking into the black maw of nothingness to find your courage… and an answer. Since penning my first two
Cat!
tomes, I've had the privilege of traveling the globe teaching my method, and I've seen firsthand the looks on writers’ faces when I am the bearer of bad news — or at least the bearer of news that feels bad. There is nothing worse than when ideas won't work, when structure fails, when your career looks like a wasteland, or when the panic is so great all you can think about is finally checking out those late-night commercials to be a Doctor's Assistant.

And btw, where
is
the University of Phoenix?

It's not actually
in
Phoenix.

I checked.

What I want is to give you the tools to get you back up on your horse and ride like the wind like you're supposed to — every step of the way. And I'll tell you something else, the real truth of it, and what's always given me the most hope:

Trouble is good.

If you breeze through your script or through your career with-out trouble, you are doing something wrong. If you are looking at trouble as a dead end instead of a learning opportunity, like some
horrible curse you have to remove – instead of the gift that it is— you will never know the joys of real victory.

Every script has to have a “dark night of the script.”

Every career, too.

And the fact is it's only when we hit bottom, in a script or in life, that we really prove who we are. When we decide to not give up but strike back, and do so smartly, there is a clear-headed resolve that gives us a new outlook and new determination that not only solves the problem, but also makes us the steely pros we need to be. And it gives us the experience that we can one day pass on to others who find themselves in a similar circumstance.

This book is all about that challenge. The challenge we accept from the first time we raise our hand and say “I'm a writer” (which I did at age 10 at Camp Lorr and still can't really explain why), and all the challenges along the way that are the turning points in our careers and in our characters.

It is my hope that at the end of reading this book, you, too, will look on trouble as anything but a bad thing. You will welcome “hitting the wall,” “taking it as far as you can,” “being all typed out,” “having no new ideas,” and all the other lame-ass excuses you've either heard writers give or given yourself.

That's over.

Trouble?

I laugh at trouble!

Ha, ha
.

See?

And soon you'll laugh at trouble, too.

No, it's not you. It's not your talent. It's not your inability to “get it” or your “not being cut out for this racket.”

It's nothing more than writing problems that need to get fixed.

If you're ready to stop your whining—
boohoo! I know Aunt Fern, yeah, yeah
— and get on with it, I'd like to quote my friend Bill Fishman's movie
Tapeheads
, starring John Cusack and Tim Robbins, and what may be the greatest line ever written:

“Let's get into trouble, baby!”

That is more than our motto. That is our battle cry.

So get ready to face trouble like a pro.

And get ready… to strike back!

Blake's First Blog/
December 9, 2005

“By helping you win, I win too. We all do. And that is the only way to become not only a better writer, but to make the world a better place.”

I thought I had a winner.

My book,
Save the Cat!
, had just come out. I was doing a lot of radio and magazine interviews. And my words of wisdom for screenwriters were catching on. So when a very nice reporter from National Public Radio asked if I was working on a screenplay, I told her that I was, but when pressed to say something about it, I kept mum. I'd just gotten through telling her the key thing to do if a screenwriter has an idea is to pitch it, to get reaction.

And yet here I was: a clam.

To be honest, I felt my incredible idea was
so
incredible I feared someone listening to NPR might steal it. What was worse, I was just about to start writing this work of genius and I didn't want to disrupt my creative
moojoo
. I had broken another cardinal rule I tell writers about: I was going to forgo all that “working out the beats stuff.” I'd decided I was going to write “Fade In,” jump on my steed, and head for the high country. And why not? I was not only a veteran screenwriter with multiple sales under my belt, I was the author of a how-to book on the subject!