SVFF 2013: SCREENWRITERS LAB—Will McCormack's We Are Puppets

Photo courtesy of the Sun Valley Film Festival

When Sun Valley Film Festival (SVFF) Executive Director Teddy Grennan asked 2013 Spirit Award nominee Will McCormack if he had written anything new since Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012)—a film he produced and co-wrote with Rashida Jones—McCormack told him he'd just finished a sad, dramatic comedy but it was kind of long, 110 pages, whereas another project, We Are Puppets, a strange pilot he'd written for cable, was only 36 minutes. Calculating a minute per page, McCormack admitted the script was weird and that if we hated it, it would soon be over.

"Quickly," he added, "I've been an actor for a long time too and every actor has bombed hundreds of auditions, which is a rite of passage. It's just part of being an actor. But as a writer when you go in and you bomb, it hurts, because an audition's only 5 minutes whereas a pitch for a movie or a TV show is, hopefully, 30-40 minutes. I can say this because I don't care anymore, but I went into HBO with my co-writer Rashida Jones and we started pitching this. I really loved the idea and was really involved with it but they were not into it. I was in a full broadcast news flop sweat—I don't even sweat when I exercise!—but I kept trying to convince them about why it was good and why I thought it would make good television."

When the script for the pilot reached its startling reveal, McCormack was expecting HBO to say, "Oh, my God, that's so good!" but instead it was more like, "Oooooh, that's so weird." So he went to Showtime the next day with the same exact pitch and they bought it in the room. They were even pitching episodes back to him. For him it was one of those funny moments in the business where one day you're a go and you sell your pilot and you're running around excited in the parking lot at Showtime, successful for 5 minutes. And then Showtime decided not to launch it.

So We Are Puppets became the script McCormack offered SVFF for their first-ever screenwriting lab. He thanked the actors in advance for helping him collaborate on the reading and assured us he would not be offended if we didn't like it, and/or that he would be happy to respond to any questions we might have about the script, and to share whatever he knew or didn't know about screenwriting since, sadly, it's all he thinks about. He said he'd be equally happy to talk about what it takes to get an independent film made, from the vantage of having written big movies for the studios, as well as "little movies." As a final caveat he disclaimed, "Because, inherently, screenplays and teleplays were meant to be seen, they're just like blueprints, we'll do our best to pace it up and make sure you can hear it so that, hopefully, you can visualize this very strange pilot called We Are Puppets."

McCormack and his fellow actors, several from SVFF work-in-progress An Unkindness of Ravens (2013)—namely Joshua Leonard, Russell Friedenberg and Calum Grant—as well as Haroula Rose and Daniel Ahearn from No Love Song, a short slotted into one of two programs of shorts at SVFF, joined five other actors to deliver a thoroughly spirited and engaging read after only one rehearsal earlier in the morning.

Photo courtesy of the Sun Valley Film Festival

Afterwards, McCormack fielded questions from his SVFF audience. As to why he elected to propose We Are Puppets as a cable series rather than a film, McCormack explained that the themes he found interesting seemed more readily explored over the course of a series and better suited for a series, whereas—by contrast—movies require a scriptwriter to tell a story in 100 pages, which can be really hard. Although Showtime decided not to make the series after buying the pilot, they were looking into getting it produced overseas in France; but, ultimately, McCormack decided not to go that way, satisfied with how he had grown as a writer in scripting the pilot.

A fan of puppets, particularly The Muppets, McCormack felt that a Sesame Street-type of puppet world would have been an interesting and fertile place for storytelling. He had also seen a 2008 documentary on BBC America called Brothers and Sisters In Love, which he found moving and heartbreaking. He researched genetic sexual attraction (GSA) and discovered that 60% of men and women who meet their siblings as adults fall in love. Not only is incest illegal in many places but there is an inordinate amount of shame associated with it. With an admirable lack of judgment—"Who am I to say it's wrong? Love is love, right?"—McCormack zeroed in on the narrative potential of GSA as a transgressive love story that would ask the question: "Would you? Or wouldn't you? And if you could, could you stop it?"

At the same time he had been reading a lot about free will, desire and destiny, which naturally raised interesting questions. He read Schopenhauer and Sam Harris's books on the delusion of free will. Even though these fascinations may not have been a prominent theme in the pilot of We Are Puppets, they were certainly an undercurrent. McCormack questioned whether the thoughts, feelings and desires that arise within us can be stopped? All these various threads "crashed" together to form We Are Puppets.

"It strikes me," I asked, "that a lot of the most brave screenwriting going on these days is going towards television—HBO is certainly championing good writing, Showtime as well. Do you have any thoughts on the difference between writing for movies and writing for television?"

"I do," he responded. "It used to be that television was for kids and movies were for adults. But now it's movies are for kids and television is for adults. I grew up on movies and am movie-obsessed. I grew up near a video store and I was there every day. In college, I worked in a movie theater. I've worked on movies. I've had every kind of job on a movie—production assistant, craft service—I just love films. When I started writing professionally, even more as a hobby, I wrote movies. It's also interesting that in television you get more respect as a writer than you do as a filmwriter. There's more money. The process is quicker. It's expedited.

"Celeste and Jesse Forever we sold to Fox Atomic. They were going to make it for $15,000,000. They went out of business. We got the script back and sold it to Overture. They were going to make it for $12,000,000 but then they went out of business. We got the script back. It was set up 15 different times and the budget kept falling and falling and falling and finally we made it and we made a movie that we're proud of. We made it for under a $1,000,000 in Los Angeles. I still haven't gotten paid. It's a hard, hard, hard road. I was the bear in the movie. Know what I'm saying? It's the biz! And it's the best I've ever been. But it was so hard.

"I get offers to write and—if I had children—I might take them because everyone needs to make money and it's a blessing to write for a living. People will say, 'We want you to do that, but we want you to do it in a big studio way.' I'm like, 'No, you don't. You don't want that.' The movie that we made is so weird and small that it wouldn't work on a $40,000,000 budget. The sad part about the movie business is that those movies that I loved, those tweeners that are $12,000,000 to $20,000,000 movies, are gone. The good news is that—because of technology and because cameras are better—you can make movies for cheaper, and you can get a hit, but no one makes any money. The longwinded version of that is that I think television is a place where you can really build characters and stories and take risks and chances in a way that you can't with movies and it's just getting more exciting. So, yes, television is a place where you don't have to censor or edit."

McCormack admitted that when he pitched We Are Puppets to Showtime, he was trying to be careful and suggested that when the two lead characters meet, they should just kiss and not have sex; but, Showtime said, "No, no, no, they should have sex." He was dumbstruck and asked them, "Are you serious?" They said, "100%." He thought, "All right. This is a good network. Thank you, guys." The bottom line McCormack ventured is that you can make a lot of money writing for television. "I'm not against it," McCormack qualified, "I don't. I'm picky about making a lot of money. I keep talking about it, but haven't. I'll probably just keep writing my puppet pilots that don't get made."

As to co-writing with Rashida Jones and getting in synch with someone else, McCormack laid out that Celeste and Jesse Forever was "a total two-hander." He and Rashida are best friends, after dating for three weeks in the '90s. "She made me cry," he quipped. He went on to say that he has been a writer his whole life, even though he had an enormous fear of being a legitimate writer and showing other people his writing. He recently found dozens of notebooks in his closet that were filled with writing about wanting to be a writer. The majority of time he spent writing was about wanting to write. He did this for most of his life. When he was little, people thought he was going to be a writer because he wrote a couple of stories in school that won grammar school awards. But he recalls being 8 years old and feeling under an enormous amount of pressure about his writing.

In college he started acting, which he gravitated towards during a difficult time in his life. It saved him. He wasn't terrible. He got parts in plays, got an agent, moved to New York where he performed in really good plays with good theater companies and had a little bit of success with acting, so he put the writing away. But he kept thinking about wanting to be a writer. His acting career was fine, but it wasn't great, and it started to feel feckless. He felt he was languishing as an actor and not connected to it in the way he started. He wanted to write and it just reached the point that he had to decide whether he was going to be a writer or just talk about it. So after he and Rashida broke up and became best friends as exes, they tried to write a pilot. At first he felt it was weird, and then decided it was not, and then it turned out to be weird. Then they wrote a movie.

He had taken a screenwriting class and written another movie before the one he wrote with Rashida; but, when they got together to write their movie, it was good because they held each others' hand. "Now I can't stop writing," he said, "and I write with people, I write without people, and I'm down for both. I'm a collaborator. I'm an actor so it's in my DNA. I ask, 'What do you think?' I'm good at that. If I'm good at anything, it's that I know how to collaborate. I'm not defensive. It's really about getting older and not caring whether people thought I was a good writer or not. It was a matter of wanting to tell a story."

But in terms of having a partner, McCormack suggested you have a good one and one you're not afraid to write badly with (though he qualified there's no such thing as "writing badly", even if one feels that way. For him, all writing is good writing. Even on the worst day of writing, if you've written it's a good day.) So he advised to find someone you can collaborate with and who you're not afraid to say anything in front of and for him that turned out to be Rashida, his good friend who was like a sister. He probably has more fun writing with someone, but gets more done alone.

Photo courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter

Asked what he would have wanted audiences to come away with had Showtime actually produced We Are Puppets as a series, McCormack compared it to the movie Splash and what happens when you fall in love with a mermaid. Do you go be with a mermaid or do you stay on shore where it's safe? He wanted people to ask that question: what would you do? He wanted people to think about what desire means because he's not convinced that we are in control of what we do. He understands that's not a popular thing to say; but, there's so much in We Are Puppets that is happening with the stars, and moons, and the way we're raised. When you come into the world, you have no choice as to where you're born, what sex you are, how big your brain is, how you are raised, how tall you are, and then all of a sudden you're 25 and you decide to make your life a certain way; but, before then, so much is happening that has formed you. Those are the questions he wanted people to think about. Mainly, at first, he thought We Are Puppets was a kind of tragic love story where someone falls in love with someone who society says you shouldn't fall in love with. So what would you do and—not just what would you do—but, what can you do?

Was there an autobiographical element to We Are Puppets? "I have a sister," McCormack grinned sheepishly. "Celeste and Jesse Forever was a lot from my own life but anything that I ever write comes from a real place. Everything that I would want to write—even this pilot, which is very strange and in a dream world—everything has to come from some sort of reality or truth. For me it's the only way. It's the way I've always acted, and it's the way I have to write. I try to be simple and clear and honest about what I'm going through. I could never write Avatar. I wish I could; I'd be so rich! But I just can't. For me the saddest and funniest and most interesting things come directly out of real life. The hard part is shedding light on that and making it filmic in some way and dramatic and making it into a narrative and making it interesting and concise. Life itself is a funny thing if I can get out of my head and experience it."

As a final query, local filmmaker Stephen Heleker asked McCormack if—since he is starting to steer his writing towards television—he would ever consider being a showrunner? "It's a lot of work," McCormack answered, "but to be a showrunner on television, you have total control. You're limited if it's on network; but, if you're Mike White (Enlightened) or Howard Gordon or Alex Gansa (Homeland), you get to make a very expensive tiny little movie every week. That's enormous freedom but enormous reponsibility. It would be awesome. I know people who come over from film to work on television and in every capacity—whether you're a writer or director or actor—it's a lot of work that never ends.

"My sister is a great actress, Mary McCormack, and she had a TV show on USA called In Plain Sight where she played a marshal with a gun and she was amazing; but, she has three daughters and works 16-17 hour days. She sees her kids when they come to the set to visit. It's a grueling life. As with anything, if you want to be an actor or a writer or work in this business, you have to really want to do it because it's so enervating. There's so much failure and disappointment that you have to say, 'I have to do this. I really want to do this.' Because often it's just so much work. But it's a great thing to be a showrunner. Some people are happy being staff writers but most people who are working as staff writers are waiting for the opportunity to run their own show."

SVFF 2013—The Evening Class Interview With Executive Director Ted Grennan

You have to love the intimate displacements of the modern age. From my desk in San Francisco I phoned Ted Grennan at his relatively new desk in central Virginia (he's just moved his family from Los Angeles to north of Charlottesville) to talk about his involvement with the sophomore edition of the Sun Valley Film Festival (SVFF), where we'll both be converging this coming weekend. Here, there and everywhere.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Ted, can you tell me a bit about your background and how you've come to helm the Sun Valley Film Festival?

Ted Grennan: I was in Sun Valley a couple of years ago. I had just been fired off a story I had sold to Fox Searchlight and didn't have anything else to do that summer. I loved that you could walk into a movie theater in Ketchum and Sun Valley and get a beer and/or a glass of wine and watch a movie. I called a friend of mine up and said, "Wouldn't it be fun to have a film festival in Sun Valley?" She said, "There's film festivals everywhere." "Yeah," I said, "but there isn't one in Sun Valley." Which wasn't completely true—there used to be the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival a few years back—but I meant a festival in a broader sense. I contacted a couple of people—Sabina Dana Plasse, Rick Kessler, and the Sun Valley Resort—and though this wasn't an original idea by any means, it was good timing. We launched in the fall and slotted the festival in for March.

Guillén: Hollywood's connection to Sun Valley has historical precedent. So I'm surprised that a festival of this caliber hasn't been proposed before?

Grennan: They had a film festival in Sun Valley about 10-12 years ago that we didn't learn about until we were well underway with our festival. We actually got some kind and supportive emails from some of the people who had been involved with that original inception of the festival. They did it one year and—though it was a good idea—the timing wasn't with them. I really don't know much else about it other than the emails we received wishing us good luck.

Guillén: But you feel the timing is with you? Can you speak to why now is the right time to launch the Sun Valley Film Festival?

Grennan: Timing is everything, though I don't know if there's always a reason for it. The key to the good timing was that the Valley was not only receptive but incredibly supportive. We had over 75 volunteers in our first year and most of them who are able are returning this year. Further, the Valley has fantastic venues—the Magic Lantern, the Opera House, the nexStage Theatre—which are great places to sit down and have a beer or a glass of wine and watch a movie. And although Sun Valley's not next-door, it has a proximity to Los Angeles by way of a short flight to Sun Valley. It's not that far to get to, but once you get there it feels like it is a real destination.  [Alaska Airlines, one of SVFF's main sponsors, offers non-stop LAX-SUN flights all winter long.]

Guillén: I wasn't able to attend last year's edition of SVFF, but it appears the effort was worthwhile, the feedback from audiences was positive, and you engineered a strong programming coup by engaging the Weinsteins. Are you furthering that collaboration this year?

Grennan: We are. The Weinsteins are coming back with three films this year. Lionsgate is coming back with a film or two. National Geographic has been the most pleasant surprise for us. They're such a fit for Sun Valley anyway and there's a local population of National Geographic guys—Greg Carr; Bob Poole won the One in A Million Award last year for War Elephants—and National Geographic considers Sun Valley a good home for them and they're coming back this year in a much larger capacity. They're launching two new television series that they'll be unveiling at SVFF and they're also holding a press conference where they'll be making a really exciting announcement in conjunction with the African Wildlife Federation (AWF). In fact, SVFF was the genesis for AWF and Nat Geo working together on a project revolving around a film-centric idea. So we're really grateful to have Nat Geo involved with an event that shares a lot of Nat Geo's values.

Guillén: Wonderful accomplishments! Now to backtrack just a bit, I understand you come from a screenwriting background?

Grennan: I do. Sometimes I get paid for it. Sometimes I don't.

Guillén: As do we all. So I've had my eye on this year's new development: the Screenwriter's Lab with Will McCormack; an event that everyone I've spoken to is planning on attending. It seems obvious to me that this will help to distinguish SVFF. On that train of thought, what do you consider the brand of SVFF? With proliferation of film festivals being something of a hot button issue, what is it that you think will set SVFF apart as a unique event?

Grennan: Frankly, it's the destination. It's Sun Valley and what it has to offer as a location. As for the festival's tone? It's family-friendly, as the Valley itself is family-friendly. We've tried to model the spirit of the festival on the spirit of the Valley. Let alone—as you mentioned earlier—Sun Valley's historical connection to Hollywood.

Guillén: Do you offhand know if the Sun Valley Resort has an archive of materials relating to its association with Hollywood back in its heyday?

Grennan: One of the richest in America! It's extraordinary. For example, they've got the most extraordinary photograph of Marilyn Monroe getting off of the Snowball Special where she's wearing these little pompoms on her toes. They've got a great photograph of Clark Gable up on the mountain next to Henry Kissinger. Jimmy Stewart. The Kennedys. It's extraordinary the amount of photographs they have in the special archive room they have in the Resort. I think it's an American treasure. We're just now getting about 12 pictures from the Resort to put up on our website.

It's actually an interesting story—I don't know if you know, stop me if you do—but the man who launched Miami Beach in the '20s, Steve Hannigan, was hired by W. Averell Harriman to help develop a winter resort. In fact, Hannigan was responsible for naming the resort Sun Valley. He was the original starfucker. He advised that if Sun Valley really wanted to open itself up as a ski shangri-la, they needed to invite up all of Hollywood's startlets and their hangers-on and so that's exactly what Averell did. He established a train called the Snowball Special that ran from Los Angeles' Union Station into Sun Valley. Everyone came and brought their family, friends and managers and the only thing Averell asked for in return was to photograph them while they were eating, drinking, skiing and they used all those photographs for their original ad campaign to sell Sun Valley.

Guillén: Fascinating. That's an early example of what film festival studies would term the "spectacular dimension" of a film festival; the necessary celebrity presence with its attendant red carpet premieres. Will SVFF be able to offer any of that this edition? Have you secured any talent to help promote the festival?

Grennan: Jodie Foster's coming! Geena Davis is likely coming. And we have some other celebrities who have expressed an interest in coming to the festival this year: Joshua Leonard, Will McCormack. One of the things I learned last year was about being ready for that celebrity presence. We had entered into arrangements to bring Guy Pearce to the festival to accompany one of his films and to provide PR for the film and Guy. The publicist called me up and she said, "We should bring Guy up and this, that and the other" and I had to tell her, "Look, you know what? We love the film but we're not ready for Guy. I'm not going to be able to put on the dog for him." She laughed at me but said, "You're smarter than I thought." I didn't want to let Guy Pearce down. I realized it was a great opportunity and it would have been fun for him to have attended the festival, but—as the girls in the office put it—we didn't have the bandwidth to handle it.

Eventually the stars will come as SVFF grows forward. Jodie Foster is an old friend of my wife's and she comes up to Sun Valley frequently; but, I didn't invite her last year because I wasn't sure how the festival was going to turn out. I asked her to come this year and she was lovely to accept the invitation. As SVFF begins to establish itself, it will naturally attract films and the actors within those films.

Guillén: Absolutely! I firmly believe that Sun Valley has the solid potential to become a true destination film festival, which—amidst festival proliferation—seem to be the festivals that are actually working and surviving.

Grennan: We had several hundred submissions this year and have ended up with a great line-up. We've really lucked out. Trevor Groth, the Director of Programming at the Sundance Film Festival, is coming up to SVFF and he's going to do a talk. But he was also kind enough to build a slate of films for us composed of films that crossed his desk at Sundance. Some of those films were admitted into Sundance but others he didn't think were right for Sundance but felt would be great for SVFF. He gave us films he really liked that we've incorporated into the festival.

To go back to your question about what will individualize SVFF on the festival landscape, we have an award that we call the Vision Award. It's our festival's top award and it recognizes the producers in this field of filmmaking who are ultimately responsible for making a film. In terms of the amount of films and where they were coming from this year, that Vision Award turned out to be an important angle that has proved quite productive for us: recognizing producers and what they actually do to help create a picture from conception to screening. This year we're featuring Jim Burke who produced The Descendants (2011). He's coming up to open our Coffee Talk series this year. These guys are the gas in the tank that keep the thing going and, as I said, I really think that a lot of the films that came to us this year are a direct consequence of our focus on producers. Alaska Airlines has been very generous this year in providing a special-flight budget to bring in more filmmakers. For example, this year we're bringing in documentarian Barbara Kopple from New York. At least, everyone's committed if not confirmed.

Guillén: Well, Ted, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me this morning. Any final thoughts regarding your hopes for this year's edition of SVFF?

Grennan: I said last year when we opened up this festival that it takes a village to do it. And it has. It's taken the entire Valley. We've had so much support from the Valley and Boise. There's a spirit in Idaho that's unique in the West. We were allowed to capture some of that at SVFF last year and—given the momentum that we have this year—I'm anticipating a lot of more of that will happen this year.