How to Write Rocky

rocky-poster

How to Write Rocky

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Beat yourself up for having “not made it” in Hollywood yet. Write a script in three and a half days after you sell your dog. This is not a story about a winner. It is kind of a story about boxer Chuck Wepner lasting almost a full fifteen rounds against Muhammad Ali unexpectedly in 1975. We settle with Wepner out of court for this little inspiration years later, and you do get to buy your dog back. Phew.

2 – The Genre. Oscar bait. I mean, inspirational drama Oscar bait that gets you a bunch of awards and international recognition. I guess this is a story about a winner. Best Picture winner, to be exact. Ten nominations, Adrian!

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? You’re a loser. A has been. A nobody. You could have been a contender. You gave up on yourself and now beat up dudes to collect money. And all you want to do in life is to get punched repeatedly by the world heavy weight champion in front of millions of television viewers and your new girlfriend Adrian. Also the studio is thinking of casting someone else, an existing star like Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds. Maybe you’ll never make it in Hollywood.

4 – The Fun Stuff. You win the role of Rocky. You would have beaten yourself up if the movie was a success without you in it, but now that you’re in it, you get to beat other people up! The most fun will be getting your butt in gear to a sweet montage. Training like a champion – specifically training like real boxer Joe Frazier – drinking raw eggs, punching dead cow carcasses in a meat locker, jogging up stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum and making them famous with a fist pump. But we can also provide soundtracks to people working out and inspire real life people to run up those stairs while listening to that song and pumping their own fists in the air. Life imitates art, after all.

5 – The Device. World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali, but in the script we call him Apollo Creed. He’s the best, regularly knocking out professional boxers. To gain some more press, Apollo hosts a mock exhibition match against a marketable Southpaw – The Italian Stallion. Apollo gives Rocky the chance to fight him, so while he is the opponent, he is also the savior. I’m not sure Jesus ever asked anyone to fight him for money, but he did provide ways for people to reach their full potentials. So. There’s that.

6 – The Coach. Rocky needs someone who believed in him once but doesn’t believe in him right now but could possibly believe in him again if he got his act together. Burgess Meredith, the guy from one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone – the one where the guy is the last man alive on Earth and just wants to read, but when he finally finds the library he steps on his glasses and can’t read. He doesn’t want to read in this movie, though, he wants to train boxers. It’s just cool that we can afford an actor from The Twilight Zone. And even though we only have a million dollar budget, we can also afford a Coppola.

7 – The Jokes. “Yo, Adrian!” The charm in this movie comes from Rocky’s love for Adrian, played by Francis Ford Coppola’s sister Talia Shire. He really fights for her love by making her laugh with jokes, and then makes love to her after buying animals from her pet store.

8 – The Title. Rocky. Rocky 2. Rocky 3. Rocky 4. Rocky Balboa. Creed. Creed 2. Wow this really is a franchise. Let’s just start with Rocky.

9 – The Ending. You lose the fight, but you last all the rounds. You make it to the end and don’t get taken down by the world heavyweight champion. Sure, you loosely based the story on a real life boxing match, but that script you write in three and half days earns you an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Congrats, winner. Even though you didn’t win the Oscar for writing, you do win a career.

10 – The Heart. Rocky wins the heart of Adrian and launches Sylvester Stallone into the hearts of viewers around the world. Sly not only stars in all of the sequels but also writes and directs most of them as well. This really is a story about a winner. And this article is to remind you that Sylvester Stallone is an Academy Award nominated Screenwriter. (Fist pump).

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Rocky. Sylvester Stallone did. Seriously. Rambo wrote Rocky.

How to Write Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park Poster

How to Write Jurassic Park

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Visit a real dinosaur theme park and write about your fun weekend. No, but wouldn’t that be awesome? One can only dream. Seriously though, just write novels for about twenty years and then write and direct a few films and turn this one screenplay you wrote about a college kid who clones a dinosaur into a novel without a college kid that then gets turned into a screenplay. Tell your buddy about your new dinosaur theme park book so he can call dibs on the directing rights.

2 – The Genre. Thriller. Action Adventure. You are stuck on an island with a bunch of cloned dinosaurs and people die, so kind of Horror? Blockbuster I think is the official genre.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? Your free vacation gets ruined when the dinosaurs in the dinosaur theme park get set free by a guy who is upset about his paycheck. You don’t want kids, and of course now you are stuck with kids while trapped on this dinosaur infested island. It’s raining a lot. And Ian Malcolm won’t shut up about his Chaos Theory.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Dinosaurs aren’t just scary, they are also majestic. The first ones we see are beautiful brachiosaurs, you know, those tall skinny necked things that move in herds. They are graceful and peaceful, similar to a giraffe in a zoo. You see birds at zoos, and dinosaurs are just basically large birds without feathers. This is the part that would totally make you want to visit a dinosaur theme park. Also, we get to drive around in Jeeps and Ford Explorers because they paid to be in this film.

5 – The Device. A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The baddest-ass dinosaur of all time because this is the first film and we don’t need to create hybrids yet. Remind the audience that she’s a female, because all of the dinosaurs on the island are genetically created to be female. Our lady T-Rex is the “Deus Ex Machina” of Jurassic Park, the “Hand of God” that magically saves our visitors at the end of the movie. The ancient Greeks used it all the time when they didn’t know how to end their plays – a giant hand just comes from above and lifts the villain from the stage. This is what the T-Rex that terrifyingly ravages a 1993 Ford Explorer at the midpoint does at the end – saves the day by eating the velociraptor attacking our main human characters while the banner “When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth” gloriously falls behind her.

6 – The Hammond. Mister Hammond could be considered the evil corporate villain in this story. He owns the park, pays scientists to clone dinosaurs, underpays his I.T. guy to run the security systems, uses a cane with a dead animal in it, and dresses generally in monochrome – all signs of a villain. No one would be surrounded by dangerous dinosaurs if it weren’t for Mr. Hammond’s little island and invitation to join him for free.

7 – The Jokes. Cast Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm and we don’t really need jokes. Make sure his shirt rips open at some point. Not a joke. Oh we can make fun of lawyers here, so put the lawyer on a toilet and have him get eaten humorously. Keep his shorts on, though, he’s not “going number two”, he’s just avoiding the children he abandoned in the car. He deserves to die.

8 – The Title. Jurassic Park. It’s the name of the park. It also suggests that the park has dinosaurs, but it smarter than just “Dinosaur Park” or “Dinoland” or “Billy and the Cloneasaurus”. Jurassic Park has a seriousness to it, and our T-Rex skeleton looks so cute in the logo! It’s based off of the bones of the first T-Rex skeleton discovered by humans and designed by the same guy that did the Star Wars font and the Starfleet insignia for Star Trek. We spared no expense.

9 – The Ending. Mr. Hammond dies in the book but survives in the movie. You finally want kids because that night you spent with them in a tree (not weird, I promise), which I guess you get to have your own kids with a blonde paleobotanist. Ian Malcolm proves his Chaos Theory and finally shuts up about it. The dinosaurs are left on the island to fend for themselves. And most importantly, we all look at birds differently now.

10 – The Heart. Life finds a way. It’s as if there’s a mass fantasy of living with dinosaurs, or at least getting to see them in real life. What is that? Anyway, it’s fun to watch, scary and exciting and inspiring. And I would still totally visit a dinosaur theme park, even knowing what could happen.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton and David Koepp wrote the screenplay based on the novel by Michael Crichton.

How to Write Forgetting Sarah Marshall

How to Write Forgetting Sarah Marshall

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Get dumped while you are naked by the long term girlfriend you met while making a tv show for Judd Apatow. Have Judd Apatow tell you that you’re going to have to write your own movie because you’re just a bit too weird to be cast as a normal leading man. Get Judd Apatow to produce a movie where you and your friends get to spend three months in Hawaii making out with Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis so you can show the fun sexy footage to your ex-girlfriend and millions of other people.

2 – The Genre. Comedy as produced by Judd Apatow. And even though this is weirdly Jason Segel’s real life therapeutic revenge movie, the film itself is a delightful romantic comedy with a great cast in a beautiful setting. Also this is Hollywood history because Jason Segel shows his penis on screen. In a comedy. It’s big. Like, a big deal. For its genre.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? I mean, you just got naked-dumped. So now, you naked-sleep with a bunch of women in Los Angeles, then end up in Hawaii where a hot girl at the front desk takes pity on you and gives you a penthouse suite for free. Wait that doesn’t sound so bad. Oh but you want your ex back and can’t have her and she’s on this island resort with you and her new boyfriend. Also you drink a lot and haven’t finished your Dracula musical yet. Ouch.

4 – The Fun Stuff. We get to see Jason Segel’s dick. It’s a good dick that is important to the story because it is based on true events. We can even name his character Peter to remind everyone that we do in fact see his peter. Dicking around aside, we get to go to Hawaii and make out with attractive people and do comedy bits with our friends! Paul Rudd as a middle-aged surf instructor, Jonah Hill as a waiter obsessed with a rock star, Bill Hader as a voice of reason step-brother, and Jack McBrayer as a virgin that lets us add even more sexual comedy into this sexy comedy. Also let’s make fun of how many people get married or engaged in Hawaii, as to rub the singleness into Jason Segel’s wounds. It is funny when he cries.

5 – The Device. Dracula Musical. Peter is writing a musical with puppets but hasn’t finished it because of his depression or whatever. Is he depressed over the breakup, or did the breakup happen because of his depression? Anyway, you must complete your creative work (like this screenplay) before you can truly win over the person you like, and the creative work is what gets Jason Segel out of the depression. Wow. Okay, Dracula Musical. I guess you’re important.

6 – The Boyfriend. We write him to be a pretentious novelist, but when comedian Russell Brand auditions he wins over the role. Your villain is a rock star who makes silly/sexy songs that you can write yourself if you want more royalties. He becomes a bigger villain when it turns out that not only did your ex dump you for him, she cheated on you with him for a year. Big ouch.

7 – The Jokes. Good thing you have funny friends with improv training that you put in your movie, so you don’t even have to write some of it – just let improvisers make stuff up on set! Oh, and the “the weather outside is weather” joke costs us $90,000 in royalty fees but the joke really hits well with test audiences so we keep it. Oh yeah, we test a lot of the jokes with different audiences before the final cut is released. We are Hollywood professionals.

8 – The Title. “You Suck, Sarah Marshall”. No. “My Mother Always Hated You, Sarah Marshall”. No, but we can put up billboards with similar sentiments up all over town to promote this movie because pictures of Jason’s face don’t test well with audiences. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is memorable as a title.

9 – The Ending. Dracula Musical! Jason stops drinking and finishes his magnum opus in a vampire puppet musical about Dracula and premieres it in Los Angeles. Mila Kunis shows up to see the musical and then his penis! They kiss and prove that Peter really has forgotten what’s her name.

10 – The Heart. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is about Jason Segel getting his shit together. He wrote it about his real life and made a lot of money off of it, so, breakups do pay. In fact, writing a screenplay about your breakup is better than therapy because you get a free trip to wherever you wrote about when you’re done. Smart guy.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel did.

How to Write Edward Scissorhands

ScissorhandsPoster

How to Write Edward Scissorhands

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Grow up in Burbank, California. Feel like you don’t belong in what is essentially a retirement community for Disney animators. While you are a teenager, make a drawing of a lonely boy with scissors for hands, and while you are an adult, show that drawing to a new novelist you hire to write the full script.

2 – The Genre. Tim Burton is his own genre, but in case you don’t know his other films, I think maybe “Sad Christmas” defines it? “Chilly Bittersweet Innocence” maybe? And “Johnny Depp with music by Danny Elfman”. Do some research by watching old horror movies from the 1930s/40s for this particular film, though. While it’s not so much scary, we do pull from a lot of classic scary movies.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? You have scissors for hands and cut anything you touch, including your own face! You live alone in a castle and your creator, the only person who can give you hands, died! You have a crush on Winona Ryder and want to touch her but can’t because you have scissors for hands!

4 – The Fun Stuff. Sharp fingers can be a bonus, you know. You can start an artistic gardening business. Or be a dog groomer. Ice sculpting, perhaps? How about opening a hair salon for the sexy neighborhood women? There are so many opportunities for an ambitious young man with scissors for hands in this weird neighborhood where people only paint their houses one of four bland colors. For a brief moment in time, suburbia accepts the lonely man with scissors for hands. Oh we can give a first on screen acting job to a future Backstreet Boy – Nick Carter is the kid on the slip and slide in the front yard. Super fun.

5 – The Device. Scissorhands. It represents the feeling of not belonging. Not being a complete human. Not finished. Lonely. Who can you touch when you have scissors for hands? Why did it have to be scissors? Couldn’t we have used chopsticks? Or even just boxing gloves? Edward Chopstickhands doesn’t have quite the ring to it, I guess. Okay let’s go with scissors.

6 – The Bully. Anthony Michael Hall bulked up from his days as the geek in 1980s teen comedies and now plays bad guys and in his off time does drugs with Robert Downey, Jr. It gives you a chance to write a fantasy revenge story where you get to kill the high school jock with your sweet scissorhands and gravity.

7 – The Jokes. Avon lady calling! Dianne Wiest is charming and funny and perfect as the door-to-door make up selling surburban mom who takes in the weird guy from the castle on the hill. He has scissors for hands and could use a good astringent, which makes him an ideal satisfied Avon customer.

8 – The Title. Scissorhands. No, that sounds like a scary movie. Make it more human. Edward Scissorhands. Yeah. He will make a good Halloween costume. Edward Chopstickhands would also be a good Halloween costume, if anyone wants some inspiration.

9 – The Ending. Winona Ryder tells the neighborhood that Edward was killed by showing them a removed scissorhand she found in the castle. Winona finally gets to hold Edward’s hand – by holding it up to show everyone he is dead. Sad and beautiful. Edward goes back into hiding in his castle, living alone for the rest of his years. Who knows how long he will live – he doesn’t age, like Winona Ryder does at the beginning and end of this movie. Bookending the narrative with an old person telling a tale is a tribute to gothic storytelling, and fits into the Frankenstein motif. Oh also thank goodness that first job as a Disney animator gave you access to make your own films. It makes sense that one of your other films gets turned into a Disney ride during the holidays, as if you were always tied to Disney, little Tim Burton from Burbank.

10 – The Heart. It snows on Christmas because Edward Scissorhands still loves old Winona Ryder and the only way he can show his love is through the magical yet lonely art of ice sculpting. It’s sweet. It’s a romantic 1990s Frankenstein. I’m not crying. You’re crying.

…*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Edward Scissorhands. Caroline Thompson did from a story by Tim Burton.

How to Write Die Hard

die hard

How to Write Die Hard

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Read a book called Nothing Lasts Forever that was written after the novelist had a dream after watching the movie Towering Inferno, which itself was based on two different books based on true stories about skyscrapers on fire. Nothing is original.

2 – The Genre. Action Thriller. There are terrorists and Bruce Willis and it’s 1988 so, duh. Wait, Bruce Willis, that funny guy from the tv show Moonlighting? Let’s try some proven action movie stars first, eh? How about Arnold Schwarzenegger? Oh, he wants to do comedy now as Danny DeVito’s twin brother. Fine. With no Arnold, and no chance of this being a loose Commando sequel even though we have the same writer, we can offer this super sexy action role to Richard Gere, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Nick Nolte, and Mel Gibson. They all say no? Legally, we do have to offer this to Frank Sinatra because Die Hard is technically a sequel to a film he made twenty years ago but he’s old now and says no. Fine. Go with that guy from Moonlighting. What’s his name? Bruce Willis.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? Terrorists take your wife hostage the night you try to win her back. The terrorists don’t like you very much, because turns out, you happen to be their biggest complication. Also Bruce Willis chose his cop life over his wife’s fancy corporate career and didn’t follow her across the country because he needs to show her how good of a cop he is but now she goes by her maiden name 3,000 miles away, so, it’s complicated.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Let’s put Bruce Willis through Hell. First of all, don’t give him shoes – make him barefoot for most of the movie. And let’s only give him an undershirt that starts as a white tank top and is so covered in sweat, blood, and fallout from all of the gunblasts and explosions that it is black by the end. Also remember that Dying Hard doesn’t just mean physical life, it can also mean not letting a relationship die. One could argue that the wife needs to see how hard Bruce Willis loves her – like making him walk over glass barefoot, falling out of buildings and then jumping back into them, and watching her get hit on by a creep. Oh and make sure to film the most dangerous stunt first, because if Bruce Willis gets hurt, it is cheaper to replace him as an actor at the beginning of filming than it is to re-film the entire movie if he gets hurt at the end and we don’t have all the footage we need. Good thing he didn’t get hurt that first day! Right, Bruce? We only have your best interest at heart.

5 – The Device. Terrorists! It’s the 1980s, after all, so terrorists are an easy villain, both for Hollywood screenwriters and the Reagan administration. The biggest terrorist is Hans Gruber, played by Alan Rickman in his first film role. We don’t want to get political on this movie, so give the terrorists some selfish financial reasons for the attack instead of political ones, making them just plain thieves instead of terrorists. Also not to get political, but one of the offices used for filming the movie becomes a real life office for post-Presidency Ronald Reagan.

6 – The Cops. Bruce Willis needs some friends on the ground, and his connection to the cop is what saves the day. Family Matters. That’s where we know that actor from, the hit show Family Matters, or really any of the other movies and tv shows that Reginald VelJohnson plays a cop – there are dozens. But the other cops on the scene aren’t the biggest fans of Bruce Willis, maybe from his singing career, so they don’t want him negotiating with the terrorists and would rather sacrifice their own officers.

7 – The Jokes. Yippie kai-yay, joke writers, because Bruce Willis is now a sex symbol! Have fun with the lines because we need scenes that will be good memes twenty some years later when we need to promote the blu-ray when blu-rays are still a thing and we decide to reboot this franchise with Justin Long from those computer commercials.

8 – The Title. Die Hard. While the book title “Nothing Lasts Forever” sounds like a James Bond movie, we need something simple that gets dudes pumped. Die. Sure, but how? Die HARD. Yeah. What about the female demographic, you ask? It’s the 1980s. The only women who go to movie theaters are on dates with men who pay to see action stars topless and sweaty.

9 – The Ending. Bruce Willis doesn’t die, so the title is kind of misleading. It’s like sure, I expected it to be difficult, but it does say Die Hard, not Almost Die Hard. Oh, you’re saying the other people die hard? But actually all of the people that die in this movie die pretty easily. It’s the people that stay alive that death hasn’t gotten yet that Die Hard. An alternate title of this movie could be “If you stick with me, you’ll stay alive”, which is what Bruce Willis says directly to his then unknown villain about sixty percent through the plotline. No one says Die Hard in this movie, which goes against the first and easiest rule of all cinematic drinking games – drink when someone in the movie says the name of the movie. Doesn’t happen in Die Hard. Drink when someone dies easily and you won’t remember it tomorrow.

10 – The Heart. Christmas! Wait, what? Santa kind of comes to save the day in the form of Bruce Willis, but it’s a great way to remind your friends that Die Hard is technically a Christmas movie and a romance that could be called “Bruce Willis Gets His Wife Back on Christmas While Other People Die Pretty Easily”. Yeah, at the heart, Die Hard is about a man who just wants his wife back for Christmas. And all I want for Christmas is for you to know that…

…*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Die Hard. Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza did based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp.