chiller blog

Posted Jun 22, 09 03:00 PM

Monster in the House

Do me a favor. I want to see the next great horror movie. Soooooo...

I want you to write the next great horror movie. All you have to be is a knockdown great writer.

It used to be the adage that one could gauge a writer's work within the first ten pages. Now, you can tell on page one. Great writers are their own niche. They are life-livers, their experiences unmistakably sculpting detail, breath, insight and nuance. Their imaginations remain a thankful step ahead of our expectations. Somehow, in the demands of convention, great writers deliver the deliciously atypical.

Often, writers are their own worst critics. That's the reality check in developing fans, because true writers are also big fans of their counterparts. Really, what's to be jealous of or competitive about when you're the only you? You've found your instrument and are honing it. Or you're not.

There are some truly wonderful writing teachers out there. I think of my high school instructors, Kay Stephens and A. Reuben Lackman. They saw something in me - like a crutch-like propensity to drop in nickel and dime words to fluff things up. ("Propensity" WAS the best word choice in that sentence, thank you very much). Sheila Coghill was the undergraduate professor who taught me to not just recognize symbolism, but explore its deeper connection.

Then again, there are those writing teachers who seem to validate themselves by publishing books on writing - especially screenwriting - without themselves ever having been produced. That's a whole lotta cart in front of no horsey. Certainly, if you follow their nod, you might end up with a well-structured script...but not a snowball's chance of getting produced.

Why? Because most aren't in the industry. They overlook the entire development perspective - what ought to be your cornerstone! You (and, hopefully, a manager who believes in your chops) must first write for the professional men and women who navigate through creative exec positions from independent production companies to studio lots. These are the producers' liaisons who - if you work hard enough - will read your script, meet with you (if you're lucky) and, should the heavens align, recommend that dwindling unicorn's horn, the purchase. And the jury prize: Your writing will make such an impression that the suits will consider you for a project they're developing. Hoo-rah!

Right about now, across the country, a lot of palms smacked upside a lot of foreheads.

My manager turned me on to a screenwriting book, Save the Cat! "At this stage?" I thought. "You gotta be kidding me. We'd already been going out with specs for a while, taking a good score of meetings off of them. I initially resisted. But soon after, I was Amazon-ing for it's sequel, Save the Cat! Goes the Movies. Simply put, the pearls of these pages were an epiphany, particularly "Monster in the House" - a chapter on developing horror by first deconstructing it (and wouldn't you know, those roots go back to Greek mythology). The genre DNA's identical, but the evolution into new prototypes - well, that's where art and vision enter. Several "aha!"s later, I signed my first screenplay contract.

CHILLER jones-ed with Save the Cat! author and - yes - double-digit sold and produced screenwriter Blake Snyder. Will the next great horror writer please soak this up, get the coffee going, then hit the keyboard? I want to see your horror movie, dude - or dudette.

Chiller: Hey, Blake! Man, if you only knew how often I name-drop you...bless Syd Field and Robert McKee, brilliant scriptwriting teachers in their own brilliant right, but I sing your praises as having penned the go-to industry bible on screenwriting. Save the Cat!, truly, is the first screenplay book that lets readers understand the development process. What kind of feedback have you gotten from the production execs and filmmakers who are horror fans at heart?

Blake: Thank you, Mike!! I love both Syd Field and Robert McKee! When I was coming up in the world, both were great guides. My take on STC! was that I wanted to get across more of an "inside baseball" book on screenwriting. Thus, the slangy, fun, easy style. It's how I talk with my screenwriting pals, and much of the insight comes from that experience, especially when it comes to what is required in a particular genre. I've gotten great feedback from horror writers about my books.

Chiller: Have development execs ever shared with you why they've passed on horror screenplays submitted to them? What kinds of comments keep creeping up?

Blake: I think the really successful horror flims are strictly horror. But I hark back to what makes horror work: Sin. I‘ll be seeing Drag Me to Hell (on opening weekend), and I can't wait to see a new Sam Raimi movie. But I note her (the protagonist's) sin: She was mean to an old lady at her bank. Let the hell dragging begin!

Chiller: So on that note, didn't your writing partner tell you that, essentially, Jaws and Alien were the same movie? What's the correlation there?

Blake: That was a key turning point, when my buddy Jim Haggin broke the news to me. Yes, both are about a monster, a house and a sin: Greed. Greed lets the shark roam the beaches of Amity; greed is why we let the alien on board the Nostromo. And both heroes have secrets - and handicaps - they must confront. I think the real key insight for horror writing is this simple fact: The monster IS the exorcist. I am a big believer in "thoughts are things." I watch my thoughts and my words because we manifest what's in our minds. To me, in Jaws, the brilliance of Chief Brody's character is that he's afraid of water. Well, that shark, in essence, comes up from the depths of his subconscious to drag him into the water. He created the monster in a lot of ways. Sigourney, too, with her fears about what this thing is kind of creates it, too. And yet once unleashed, the monster acts as a force of cleansing. It addresses the group sin, and wipes it away, so that by the time it's dispatched, we've gotten rid of the sin of our community. Be careful what you wish for comes in many forms. In monster movies, it's our own dark thoughts deep inside that are what we should be afraid of, and horror films like these show that. But it goes all the way back to the Minotaur and the Maze. We love this story. Always have. Always will.

Chiller: The "Monster in the House"...let's safely assume, among Chiller's fanbase, that we have a lot of undiscovered filmmakers who dream of giving the world the next great horror film. What are the key principles of MITH from which they should start creating? Our Annual Dare 2 Direct Contest is just around the corner, heh heh...

Blake: Again, I think addressing sin is key. The problem for people today is the concept of sin seems "old fashioned." In the "it's all relative" world we live in, there is no sin. This is why I think the Japanese horror films that I love, like the original Ring, and Grudge, are about that sin which is...the absence of sin. The heroes of those films are guilty of ignorance. They operate without an awareness of sin, or care about it. And their punishment comes from that.

I sold a horror movie in 2006 called Granny that I co-wrote with writer David Stephens (whose Cabin By the Lake is one of the best films ever, IMO)...[And following the principle of sin] that's why I thought Granny was such a brilliant idea (if I say so, myself). The idea of being punished for minor infractions like rudeness, is so right on. No one knows etiquette any more, or cares about being polite. We don't teach it or laud those who are polite, so the poor teenagers who come up against Granny don't even know they're doing a bad thing by, say, not letting everyone off the elevator first before getting on, which becomes a fatal error when Granny is around. It's also how I got the idea for the movie, right there at the Beverly Center. But finding a new way to commit a "sin" is the first step, I think.

Chiller: You introduced a concept specific to creating horror - something you dub "The Half Man" -

Blake: YES! The "Half Man" is a character that keeps popping up in these films, and while writing STC2 it just struck me how important he is. THIS is the character that has had an interaction with the monster before, and come away damaged because of it. Quint in Jaws...Ian Holm, the cyborg in Alien...the father in The Ring - and they all must die basically like flawed mentors. Part of what they offer is a character who can tell the myth and the backstory of the monster. The scene in Jaws about the USS Indianapolis is a perfect example. We need to know what we're up against. And part of what this mentor's warning is: You can't win. Like Ian Holm tells Sigourney Weaver in Alien right before they unplug him. But, like I was saying before, the monster is the exorcist, and these guys are the survivors of the last time the monster was let out of his hole. It's cautionary figure for the hero, to say, "Don't let this happen to you!"

Chiller: Aren't there always exceptions to the rule - successful, effective films that may not necessarily adhere to the MITH model? Say...The Blair Witch Project (which was improvised from a 35-page outline)?

Blake: I love Blair Witch! And I think it absolutely fits the model of MITH that I propose in my books. There is a monster a house and a sin, for sure. The house in this case is the woods. And one would not think of that as confined space, but I think it was one of the scariest aspects of the film: Being lost, walking in circles, trapped, while a real monster circles closer - one we were warned about, but did not heed.

Chiller: Horror writers can master script mechanics, but how does one, or should one, teach exercising good taste (read: Restraint) and maintaining a palatable tone that won't lose the audience? You cite the merits of Saw, which is grisly and explicit, but never "feels" like it's gone too far, even when it has.

Blake: I am not a fan of the bloodfest films. To me, it's the implied horror that is scarier, and the loss of one's soul that's the true fear. But that cycle of Hostel, etc. is over. And, hate to say it, part of an era of affluence that is over, too. In affluent times, we need more to shock us, and we often see excess in all genres due to the fact that it takes more to titillate us. We're bored looking for the next thrill, like Roman emperors stuffed with food looking for the next course. Now those times are over, and recession entertainment is different...and I think, usually, smarter. We get back to core values in recessionary times. And fear more. That's where horror comes into play and I think horror writers have a great opportunity to do some really dazzling work.

Chiller: Have you ever had run-ins or response from those behind films you cite as bad genre examples - Arachnophobia, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea? Or good - Fatal Attraction, Scream, The Ring?

Blake: I like all those films! My only beef with Arachnophobia is, it's a little tiny monster. As much as Jeff Daniels is afraid of them, I'm not. Step on that spider, Jeff. Jeez, man up!

Chiller: You've sold 13 spec screenplays - one of which is a horror-comedy, Granny. What's going on with that? Were any of the other sales horror scripts that you can talk about? Are you writing on any MITH projects now?

Blake: Our title character's a recent escapee from the St. Vitus Center for the Criminally Insane and....has a bug about etiquette. Its poster line is one of my favs: "Granny. She's off her rocker." Clearly there is a fine line between comedy and horror there. It speaks to the difficulty of blending tones.

I am not a MITH writer. I write family films, primarily. But Granny, I love. I'm still waiting to see what happens with it. I went to see Cloris Leachman speak a few weekends back. She has an autobiography out and - by coincidence - went to school with my Dad, producer Ken Snyder (Big Blue Marble, Roger Ramjet). I thought she'd make a perfect Granny!

Chiller: So what scares you, Blake? :)

Blake: Scripts that I've written lying in a drawer! This is my mission for my own scripts and for the writers who come to me for consultation. I am determined to help writers sell their work. And anything I can do to keep those scripts from moldering in your drawer is my mission!

Chiller: Thank you so much, Blake.