If you're a performer — even an established and regularly working actor — who has thought about making the transition into screenplay writing, don't expect to garner immediate respect, let alone enthusiasm, within the industry. "No one ever takes an actor seriously when they're writing," says Danny Strong, who broke through as a scenarist this year with HBO's Emmy-winning Recount. "It's like, 'Okay, that's cute — you go do whatever you're gonna go do.' I mean, it seems no one takes anyone seriously in Hollywood until something actually happens. And then everyone takes it seriously — very, very quickly."
In a sense, however, actors are writers to begin with. Whenever they devise backstories or improvise on the life of a character during rehearsals, they are in essence collaborating with a playwright or screenwriter to flesh out a characterization.
Some actors, like Strong, take the next step and begin writing their own scripts, sometimes (but not always) because they want original material they can produce and/or play in. Back Stage recently spoke with Strong and two other such actors to find out how they moved into the world of scriptwriting and what challenges they faced.
Healthy Competition
By the time Strong was in his mid-20s, he was working consistently as an actor (TV's Clueless, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). But he was restless and felt the need for another creative outlet. He began writing partly out of a friendly rivalry with actor friend Michael Bacall, who had started taking meetings as a screenwriter. Strong hoped to write something along the lines of Swingers or Election. His first attempt was a hipster comedy called Die, Harry, Die, in which he planned to take the leading role. He followed this up with three or four other efforts, eventually dropping the idea of writing parts for himself. Though none of his ideas sold, one script, with a Princess Bride-type scenario, landed him a manager for the literary side of his career.
Strong would bring his laptop along to acting jobs and write in his trailer. On days during which he was in several scenes, his hours at the keyboard were cut short. But generally the two careers meshed comfortably. "The truth is," he says, "an acting career is mostly auditioning, which takes up a few hours. And it'd be great, because I'd go on my audition and then I'd immediately get back to my script, and it would get my mind off the audition, which is the healthiest thing to do."
Strong is not the sort of writer who needs to work only at designated times. As long as he can devote a couple of hours each day to a script, he feels satisfied — though most days he tends to write for longer than that. He forces himself to take Sundays off, however, even if he's in the middle of a hot streak.
As time passed, however, discouragement inevitably crept in, despite his resolve to keep writing no matter what. One day, he had an epiphany: "I thought, I've spent four years doing this. I've got four scripts on my shelf. Not one of them is a movie I'd go see. I really need to reassess some things." When he saw David Hare's play Stuff Happens, which deals with the Iraq War, Strong became fired up. Immediately he hatched the idea of writing about the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, a subject of which he had, at best, a passing knowledge. He ordered books and set to work researching. Recount was pitched to producers Paula Weinstein and Len Amato in early 2006. They took it to HBO, which bought it for development — a rare practice for that network, Strong notes. He completed four major drafts of the script before Recount went before the cameras in October 2007, with Kevin Spacey and Tom Wilkinson in starring roles.
During production, Strong put his acting career on hold. This frustrated his acting representatives somewhat, but they were also, he says, smart enough to see the bigger picture. He recently came back to acting, with an episode of TNT's Leverage. Meanwhile, writing offers continue to arrive. He is currently working on a film about the landmark court case Brown v. Board of Education.
After 14 years working as an actor "with my hand held out," Strong finds it refreshing to suddenly be in demand: "We'll see how long it lasts, but I'm enjoying it."
More Than Monkey Business
Tara Platt has been in the business of acting for most of her life; she started performing in plays at about age 9. Now she and her husband, Yuri Lowenthal, live in L.A., where they make a comfortable living at their chosen craft. But a few years ago, Platt suggested to Lowenthal that they try writing a screenplay together.
Lowenthal, who had been working on a film script of his own, was somewhat skeptical but agreed to the collaboration. A week later the team had a rough draft for a feature. While refining that script, they developed two other screenplays as a team and began work on solo efforts. In 2004 they formed a production company, Monkey Kingdom Productions.
To some extent, Platt admits, the pair invented the rules as they went along. The first Monkey Kingdom product, Lowenthal's thriller Tumbling After (now in postproduction), went into gear before the team could solicit much outside feedback on the script, because a suitably spooky location had become temporarily available and they had to move fast. For an upcoming horror script, which they plan to co-produce with another company, they will be more cautious. "We're making sure that script is solid and set before we try to go into production," Platt says.
One of the couple's intentions was to create acting work for themselves. They played only supporting roles in Tumbling After, however, because they knew they would be assuming various duties behind the camera and would not have time for leading parts. But they primarily identify themselves as actors as opposed to writers. Auditions and bookings dictate when they are available to sit at the computer to work on scenes. "We'll talk about it at the beginning of the week," Platt says, "and review our schedules and say, 'Looks like you've got a chunk there and I've got a chunk here. Do we want to try to get together during that time and work on something?' "
Platt's and Lowenthal's agents for on-camera work have been supportive of the couple's literary endeavors, and it seems there has been little impact on these reps, as the novice screenwriters have not reached the point of pitching scripts to outsiders. Platt says she and Lowenthal have deliberately avoided marketing their scripts to other filmmakers because they'd like to eventually produce the projects themselves. They know, however, that some of their plot lines require budgets beyond what Monkey Kingdom can currently afford. Meanwhile, their voiceover reps have become excited about the possibility that the pair will pitch an idea they've concocted for an animated TV series.
Platt says a positive side effect of screenwriting has been an enhanced ability to analyze scripts when she's wearing her actor hat. She finds she has developed a better sense of the big picture of a scenario. "Now when I pick up a script, I can dissect it a little better, a little faster, a little easier," she says. "And I can find my way into the character a little more smoothly."
Playing Every Role
First-time screenwriter Dan Futterman received an Oscar nomination for the 2005 biopic Capote. Since that time, the actor — known for his work on stage (Angels in America), screen (The Birdcage), and television (Will & Grace) — has channeled much of his energy and time into his newfound occupation. He hasn't given up acting entirely, but it has clearly taken a back seat.
Partly that's because he and his wife, writer Anya Epstein, have two young children and he hates to stray too far from his home for location shoots. Writing is something he can do at the house or at the local coffee shop. But he generally finds his new occupation more fulfilling than the old. "There aren't that many things that I encounter as an actor that are more interesting than the writing that I'm doing," he says, although one exception was 2007's A Mighty Heart, for which he made three treks to India and Pakistan to portray ill-fated real-life journalist Daniel Pearl.
Futterman attributes much of his Capote success to the help of Epstein, whom he met on the set of the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. He says she helped him realize the importance of structure in a screenplay. When he began Capote, he wrote individual scenes out of context. Not any longer: "By and large, I find it absolutely essential to have a really clear blueprint of what the screenplay is going to look like."
Even before Capote went into production, Futterman and Epstein had collaborated on another script: a romantic comedy set in the world of hockey. Since Capote's release, the two have done a major rewrite on that project. Meanwhile, Futterman was hired to adapt Jonathan Tropper's novel Everything Changes and to do a "top-to-bottom" revision of another script, called Foxcatcher, for Capote director (and Futterman's longtime friend) Bennett Miller. Says Futterman, "I'd never done this before, but it actually worked out pretty well: I sat in a room for a month with these index cards on a wall and just rearranged the whole script — put new [cards] up, made a very detailed new outline, and then wrote the screenplay."
Some projects come to Futterman as a straight offer; others he must compete for. Accustomed to auditioning for acting jobs, he had no idea how much time would be spent soliciting writing jobs. "You read the stuff; you have a preliminary meeting with the producer; you go back; you make a real sort of effort to have story clarity in your head; you pitch the story to the producers, the money people," he says. "It becomes a real endeavor."
Though he makes no judgment about actors who write screenplays for themselves to star in, it's something he strongly rejects doing for himself. "I think I would limit the writing, in a way, by imagining myself in the role," he explains. Yet he also finds himself inhabiting every character he writes. Screenwriting, he believes, provides an antidote to the kind of typecasting actors face when they grow older and overly familiar. "As a writer, you get to play everything: a 70-year-old woman, a 40-year-old guy. There's a 7-year-old boy in the script that Anya and I wrote. And I feel like I've played that part. There's something really liberating about that."
Write to the author at mdundaswood@yahoo.com.