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 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.

How to Write Back to the Future part 3

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How to Write Back to the Future part 3

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Write a sequel so long that you have to make two movies out of it. Call all three films a trilogy because it sounds more professional and less like you couldn’t edit yourself.

2 – The Genre. Different than the first two, actually. What? Yes! This is a Western, mostly, and even partially a Romance! Sure, we have time travel and DeLoreans and promotional agreements with Nike and we eventually do get Back to the Future, but first, Marty becomes a cowboy and finds out Doc can dance with the woman we add to the poster!

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? Since this is the third of a trilogy, the worst that could happen is this movie being terrible. Thank goodness we are seasoned writers by this point and know what we are doing and this movie is great. In order for it to be great, it has to make sense with parts one and two but still have its own story. Same but different. What’s the 1885 version of the skateboarding scene – Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen drags Marty on a noose from horseback through town and hangs him in an attempt to kill him. This ain’t the 1950s anymore. At least we hang Marty in front of the newly built Courthouse, with the Clock nearby so we can show the audience the history of Hill Valley. Let’s just have Marty get saved by the sniper shot from Doc. Sweet. Also, the Back to the Future trilogy could be considered a “time-dash Harold” for all of you improv students out there. Same scene, same location, similar characters, different details from the time period. But this time, the time period is the rough and tumble Old West, so of course our 1885 villain almost instantly kills the 1985 teenager.

4 – The Fun Stuff. The Old West! What’s complicated is also what’s fun! Trains! Horses! Throwing explosives into a ravine to blow stuff up! Cool hats and ponchos and gun fights! But structurally, you get to play with reversing things from part one – Doc warns Marty about the future, they switch who says “This is heavy” and “Great Scott” by the end. Doc is the one that says “I’m from the future, I came here in a time machine that I invented.”, reversing the speech given to him by Marty in part one. You don’t have to write a new movie, just invert the lines from the first one!

5 – The Device. It’s the thing that makes time travel possible. This time it is a train. We’re going back to the “how are we going to get you Back to the Future?” question. It worked and we can answer it again without lightning. Oh, and the studio backlot does not look like the Old West, so we are building an entire Hill Valley 1885 up in Northern California near a train museum that will let us use their locomotive. Ironically, that set gets burnt down after being struck by lightning.

6 – The Clara. Doc gets a lady friend. Finally. School teacher Clara Clayton reveals a softer side of Doctor Emmett. Have Clara wear purple and like science and adore Jules Verne. Oh, and why Jules Verne, author of From the Earth to the Moon, and not H.G. Wells, the author of The Time Machine? Turns out timing. H.G. Wells won’t publish that book for another decade, also it’s a bit too “on the nose” for a time travel movie, and Jules Verne is a delightful reference.

7 – The Jokes. Just like the first two, same but different, but this time, 1885 is different and way more deadly than 1985. Confuse the cowboys with things like Nike, running, Frisbees, and 7-11 jokes. Let’s see if we can get now former President Ronald Reagan to play Mayor of Hill Valley 1885. Oh, he doesn’t remember that he used to be an actor? Sad. Let’s at least get ZZ Top to play at the dance, they’re writing a new song for part three and look like they belong in the Old West anyway.

8 – The Title. A Fistful of Dollars. No, but we make a lot more money that with Back to the Future part 3. That Clint Eastwood movie is just what we pay homage to in the shootout before we send Marty Back to the Future. Part three is where we get to steal all the great scenes and shots from classic Westerns because no one watches Westerns in the late 1980s but can kind of get the references from those old Eastwood movies. Oh and remember to add a third person to the poster, because Back to the Future part 3. Three people.

9 – The Ending. We’ve got to end the Western homage, then we’ve got to save Clara and Doc’s relationship, then we have to get Marty Back to the Future, then we’ve got to destroy the DeLorean, then we’ve got to deal with Marty’s insecurities about being called a chicken, then we have Marty open up emotionally to Jennifer by showing her the destroyed time machine, then boom, another time machine with Doc and his new family. Lots of endings here. But when we are done with all of the endings, make sure people know that this is the end of all Back to the Future movies by putting “The End” after Doc’s train time machine takes off into the screen, as if a tribute to one of the first moving pictures “A Train Leaves the Station” by the Lumiere Brothers. But really, this is The End.

10 – The Heart. “The Future is what you make it, so make it a good one.” Doc gives Marty some good advice. He was the first one that told Marty “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” in part one. While part one is about learning to love your parents, the entire trilogy is about a friendship that stands the test of time.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Back to the Future part 3. Bob Gale did from a story he and Robert Zemeckis developed.

How to Write Titanic

titanic

How to Write Titanic

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Pick a well publicized international disaster. Does not matter if multiple movies have already been made about the disaster. It just has to be a famous disaster. Become obsessed with it to a point that the only way you can fund your love of visiting the tragic site is to make a studio-financed movie about it.

2 – The Genre. Historic drama tragedy romance with a modern twist? Pretty much Romeo and Juliet, but on a real boat in 1912 for a 1997 movie audience.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? The disaster you picked. In this case, the boat sinks after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. People die. Lots of people die. Like, rich and famous people die, as well as lots of poor people and workers trapped in the lower decks, and even some middle-class types. Also, modern-day people actually get hurt during the filming of some of the dangerous stunt scenes, but that won’t stop this sinking ship from winning a history-making eleven Oscars at the Academy Awards and won’t even stop James Cameron from quoting himself when accepting those Oscars. If you really feel like the King of the World, I guess you need to shout it to an ocean of people forced to watch you give a speech.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Leonardo DiCaprio falls in love with Kate Winslet and then dies and falls to the bottom of the ocean after she lets him go. Like we said, this is Romeo and Juliet on a boat, so at least one of the young lovers needs to die. In this case it’s not warring families, it’s separated class systems. A rich girl and a grunt, Director Jim’s favorite thing to write about. There is a rival fiancé and a pushy parent, and an excuse to have our sexy couple do sexy stuff all over this big sexy boat. Oh I guess the sexy stuff is the fun stuff. Leo is dreamy and Kate shows her boobs.

5 – The Device. The thing that the disaster takes place on/with. In this case, the boat, Titanic. It was famous then, it was still famous when James Cameron became obsessed with it to actually visit it in real life. The entire contrived Romeo and Juliet thing is just to get teenage girls to cry and to get people interested in what is actually a history lesson of what happened on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. Director Jim knew that in order to get people to care about the boat sinking, the audience had to care about the people on board the boat. It’s as if the Titanic IS Leonardo DiCaprio, sinking to the bottom of the ocean, our Boat/Romeo forever enriching the lives of those who survived. Romantic, ain’t it?

6 – The Diamond. The Heart of the Ocean drives the plot of the modern day story. Old Rose is flown out to meet the surveyors of the Titanic sight to hopefully gain insight on the location of this valuable jeweled necklace after they find a drawing of her wearing it, boobies out. It is the MacGuffin, the thing one of the characters seeks for most of the plot, only to be tossed into the ocean in the end. Not the boobies, the necklace. But both are tied to the villain, Rose’s fiancé Billy Zane, who gives the necklace to her on the ship, probably after feeling her boobies. Why a blue diamond? James Cameron loves the color blue is all. But it also represents the ocean. Heart of the Ocean. Blue. Obviously.

7 – The Jokes. Not so much one-off jokes as it is in the charm of the lead actors, even during the attempted suicide scene when they first meet at the butt of the ship. The comedy is in the embarrassment of spittle upon DiCaprio’s chin, or the prideful pain in Winslet’s bare ballet tippy toes on a beer-covered third class floor, or in sly comments about how Americans don’t have fleas and the third class has hardly any rats. It is 1912, after all. There are only so many jokes that existed back then and it’s important to be historically accurate. You can put a theme of playing cards throughout as a fun add-on. Have Leo win his ticket in a game of cards, give the main characters the colorful card names of Jack (black) and Rose (red). Make the mom remind Rose of how their good name is the only card they have left to play. Playing cards. Those existed in 1912.

8 – The Title. Titanic. It’s the name of the boat. Or the most famous thing about the disaster. Unless it is “too soon” and the disaster was too tragic, then name it something else, like A Night to Remember or The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Or Futility. Wait, that’s the name of the novel about an unsinkable ship that hits an iceberg mid-April called the Titan by author Morgan Robertson released fourteen years before the sinking of the real ship Titanic. Yes, before. True story. Too complicated to include in our movie, though, so just let people find that on the internet on their own. Stick to Romeo and Juliet on a boat and what really happened in 1912 and the simplest title that doesn’t disturb people. Also predict the size of profits you want to make with this film. Titanic.

9 – The Ending. The boat sinks. We knew that. We also knew that Romeo and Juliet died at the end of the story when Shakespeare tells us about it in the opening monologue of his play. It’s not about what happens, it’s about how it happens. The movie Titanic, at three hours and fifteen minutes, especially when seen on the big screen, makes you feel like you are actually on the Titanic during its real life two hour and forty minute sinking. That’s what makes teenage girls like me go see Titanic in theaters five times in three weeks. That, and Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s over sixteen paid hours of watching a boat sink. It felt real. I cried a lot.

10 – The Heart. (will go on). Romeo and Juliet, remember? A love story for the ages, but modernized with today’s hottest actors. Also, James Cameron just tricked you into sitting in a three hour history lesson. You could totally ace a test on the Titanic after watching the movie. I mean, nothing about Jack and Rose or their supporting characters is true, nor is anything that takes place in Bill Paxton’s time, but everything else is historically accurate. Director Jim studied every nook, cranny, photograph, blueprint, artifact, and human story that entered that ship, and paid tribute to it in his film, dropping fictional star-crossed lovers into the historically-accurate background. Oh yeah and there’s a great song written by James Horner for Celine Dion at the end. My Heart Will Go On. As will my love for the movie Titanic. Just looking at the poster makes me want to see it again.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Titanic. James Cameron did.