Australian films, self-therapy: Michael Favelle

As co-writer, co-producer and director of an 86 min film entitled Cracking On completed last January, I can relate to what these distributors say. This film is about a happily married middle aged couple who live with their two kids and discover the passion has waned. So rather than call in a lawyer, they sit down and work out a deal to stay together without fracturing their relationship of about 28 years. So they agree to date others, not relatives or friends. We track the hubby as he sets out to find a girlfriend – without lying. It’s interesting food for thought!
The rationale behind this was to make a thought-provoking film from the heart, set in Oz without costing too much – win interest because it explores marital fatigue, a syndrome which affects the majority of marriages in all territories – but few people, including the Media, talk about it. They’re afraid to.
I tried about 12 distribs, four film festivals & 2 TV nets – all passing. One intelligent distrb exec (unusual discovery as most of them think like 2nd hand car sales people), did ponder the notion that as the world’s audiences become locked in a life of repetition with little real-life stimulation, they want escapist fare, which costs more, thus harder to make. I call that fare “brain candy”. Then all that does is make future generations (who will dwell in a world of great jeopody due to the way we treat each other and the planet), dumber and number.
So as usual, we Aussies are slow to realise we can & do produce films that reflect life, that also try to entertaine without surrender. In France they have a TV channel that displays films of all sorts, especially those that are not obvious “brain candy”. There is now a groundswell of buffs who enjoy such fare. Everyone becomes sensitive as to what’s going on. I try to pursuade nets here to try it as a series in late night slots and all I get is what you get when you ask a 2nd H car sales person a curley question – fear!

Regards Michael’s observation re self-therapy…

An author, if they do their job well, should explore a theme and express a message through their work.

This should be a passionate undertaking.

It is certainly a form of discovery and self-revelation. The work should address the human condition and in fact has to, to effectively engage an audience.

All of that can be delivered in a genre piece however the,’ the self-therapy’ Michael describes is so often delivered by auteur film-makers in dramas.

Many talented directors can capture a scene visually but cannot understand story, character, theme and message in the way that a writer can.

The divorce of the professional writer from the film-making process and the failure to adequately invest in the development process, engaging teams of writers, is one reasons why auteur film-makers rein and the output we see results in the ‘self therapy’ described by Michael.

It’s a solvable problem.

There are Govt bodies trying to meld Writer-Director-Producer teams. They are encouraging genre works and good script development but a key problem is the lack of investment in the development process.

It is a hard sell to convince private investors or even the industry that investment in writing and teams of writers will lift our game and deliver better results.

Writings still seems to be the last thing we focus on and every awards night, all we hear about is the stunning work by the DOP and the post team…shame about the story.

This is not about bashing directors, DOPs or the post team. I merely wish to point out that there is an important part of the process being overlooked and it is a key element to seeing better content being created by the Australian film industry.

Michael is right. David is right. Story Story Story.

It’s just a pity Michael Favelle doesn’t know how to sell a good film. Then we’d all be happy.

Its a childish, controlling thing this neglect of the story and subsequent screenplay. Writers are filmmakers as well, why they are more often than not treated as the narrative errand boy I’m not totally sure, but I feel it self generates from fear, fear is a powerful emotion, especially with regard to the creative process.
I suppose there is just the collective paranoia that comes from those that fear the loneliness of the writing process. This fear mainly stems from not understanding what writers do or how they do it. A kind of fear driven mixture underpinned by a lack of empathy and inherent laziness. Most filmmakers haven’t or simply don’t want to spend years trying, failing and succeeding with the creative process involved in understanding how to create effective drama, or the highly self critical pathways discovered in the educational/creative process. Most filmmakers ( Moronic TV Producers especially) feel that if they can control a production, or a camera they can talk effectively to an actor and have been blessed with some automatic dramatic detector that can x-ray the potential of every script.
Well look at the shocking standard of our TV and the last ten years of film making in this country and you very quickly understand that this really is an industry where nobody knows much, especially when it comes to story and most are driven by fear, the fear of failure, fear of not being professionally relevant, the fear of not being heard, the fear that if I stuff this up I won’t get another job.. so I will micro manage everything and then it will be totally my vision and my vision is right.. so it won’t be a failure…the quickest neurotic pathway to creating dramatic drivel..
Creativity driven by fear leads to a lack of story empathy, lack of respect for the writing craft and thus script development comes a long way down the ladder…what is also sickening is that audiences and their collective intelligence aren’t really respected at all (Fear that they might be smart so give them something half baked and at least they won’t be offended, what strange twisted logic? Driven by fear). Film is a Directors medium, but it would be refreshing if more Directors could check their writing credentials and collaborate with writers who have done the hard and lonely work of trying to understand the elusive nature of drama and how to effectively create it on the page.
Fear, it really is a killer….on every level…especially creativity

Here, here David Steinhoff. You are right. Many talented directors can capture a scene visually but cannot understand story, character, theme and message in the way that a writer can. And many producers can recognize a good screenplay when they read one but are not necessarily the best person to be in control of its development. In our current producer-led industry it is presumed, by funding bodies, that the producer is the best person to oversee the development of a screenplay through all the drafts it takes to wind up with one that is worth taking out into the marketplace. Most good screenplays take years to develop and up until the second or third draft it is often the case that only the screenwriter believes in the project sufficiently to keep battling for it despite it seeming to have a snowflake’s chance in hell of being produced. Very often, perhaps most often, screenwriters are not paid for this stage of the work they do. It is a labour of love. And it is during this vital early stage, as the foundations are set, that the screenwriter, I feel, needs to have the freedom to explore his or her screenplay’s potential unfettered by input from or control by a producer – unless, that is, the producer is very patient (this can take years) and has an understanding of the screenwriter’s craft. Forcing screenwriters to get into bed with a producer during this early stage of development carries with it the danger that the person overseeing the development and the one who is seen, by funding bodies, as being in control of the project (the producer), may have very little understanding of the craft of screenwriting; may be in a hurry to ‘get it up’ and want to speed up the process. This is not a criticism of producers. Why on earth should they be expected to be expert in script development as well as expert in producing? As well as saddling screenwriters with a producer too early in the development process the funding bodies’ reveal, through their insistence on this, that they believe screenwriters are unable to develop their screenplays without a producer holding their hand. (I would love to know what other screenwriters think about this?) As an industry we lament the lack of good screenplays constantly and yet, at the same time, treat screenwriters with a distinct lack of respect.

Hi James, while I agree with the vibe you are delivering in that it does take many years for a great script to develop …

I would have to step in and say that the difficulty with that long develpoment process is that there is nothing available for an independent producer to survive. While funding bodies provide develpment funding to cover the writer fee (albeit paltry) there is nothing in the development pot to cover a producer development fee (it’s a token amount that barely covers the cost of a few phone calls and some script printing!!).

So in most basic terms, indy/feature producers need to eat too.

I have seen producers slog it out working patiently with emerging writers to develop their scripts, only to have those writers “jump ship” once the script was only just beginning to get presentable – because “nothing had happened” or it “wasn’t happening fast enough”.

Sadly, now it’s become a case of producers simply not wanting to invest in developing projects they can “loose”, because many have been burnt way too many times.

It’s very disheartening to see young writers trying to find a producer to work with them, but if over an option period, the best one could hope for is one or two rounds of script development funding, it’s not enough to get a screenplay up to international standard.

For every film that actually gets “produced” the average development time is 7 years.

When was the last time your saw a lawyer advise a writer to sign a 7 year option ?

Blessed be the producer who will stick their necks out to support and develop a project.

Kay

Yes, it is a dilemma for producers too and it’s hard to see an easy solution for writers and producers who do not have access to Enterprise funds. There is a huge element of blind date involved, for both producer and writer, in getting into bed in the early stages of script development – no matter how much they like and trust each other and how similar their vision for the project may be. The fact is, projects grow in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance – especially when there are several years involved in development. With the best will in the world a writer and a producer can come to differ about the direction in which they’d like the project to go. They have been bound together by their shared love of what each thought the project could be. The choice at this point is likely to be between (a) continuing with a bad and potentially acrimonious marriage, (b) one or the other of the partners leaving the project or (c) the writer or producer firing their partner, depending on who ‘owns’ the project – neither, in all likelihood, having earnt much or anything for all their work. What to do!

There are only two solutions that I can think of. (1) The producer owns the project from the outset and can hire or fire writers as he or she sees fit. This is a perfectly valid approach if the producer is the initiator of the project. (2) The writer can hire and fire producers until one is found who is best suited to the project. In other words, screenwriters should be free to shop around until they find the ‘right’ producer – just as producers who initiate projects should be free to move from one writer to another in order to develop the screenplay they want.

There is a problem with both of these scenarios for writers and producers with little or no cash flow. They are not in a position to hire or fire each other. What to do! I think the only solution is for both producers and screenwriters to be serially monogamous – to enter into relationships with each other based on trust and with an understanding that if the relationship does not work out the partners can part ways with a minimum of hard feelings and no messy divorce. Okay, but what about who owns what? The partner who leaves is entitled to equity, of course – in the event that the project is eventually funded. I’ve been in this situation once – in the producer role. This was a documentary series but the same principle applies. Through en exchange of emails (no lawyers, no formal contracts) it was agreed that someone I had ‘employed’ for a very small wage (using FFC money) on the series was entitled to a certain percentage of overseas sales in the event that they occurred. They did. The FFC was happy to accept this exchange of emails as a contract so no money was wasted on lawyers.

If it is agreed by both the producer and screenwriter, at each stage of development, how much each has brought to the project, a parting of the ways need not be too painful. This might give the contract departments of funding bodies a bit of a headache but the problems are not insurmountable.

The screenwriter-producer relationship (and of course the screenwriter-director relationship) is too important to take the risk of consummating the marriage without a good deal of foreplay! Producers and screenwriters must, I think, be free to play the field, sleep around a bit, until they find their marriage made in heaven and are prepared to commit till death us do part.

jamesricketson@gmail.com