Writing a Great Movie by Jeff Kitchen

Before I move on with structure, I really have to apologize to , the author of the book who’s image you see on the left… I had written a review of Jeff’s book, but never got around to uploading it here to the site… As a result of my recent hard drive failure, the review was somehow converted into some kind of binary bullshit text…

My mistake?

I wrote the review in Microsoft Word instead of …

All my Word docs somehow became corrupted and converted and I’ve tried everything I can think of to get them back to where they were… Unfortunately, even Open Office couldn’t open them and make them read right.

However, all my Open Office docs are in pristine condition…

Sometimes FREE IS BEST.

What’s interesting here is that I have now lived with Jeff’s book for several months now… Often referring back to it when I’ve wanted to do a little brainstorming using the . In Writing A Great Movie, Jeff has really expanded Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations with modern terminology as well as some explanation as to how to use them to assist you in plotting out your story and screenplay.

Jeff discusses how to use the 36 Situations in several different ways…

On top of using the 36 Dramatic Situations for the tools outlined above, Jeff then goes into a discussion of how the 36 were used in such films as:

After a fairly thorough discussion of using the 36 in these films, Jeff ends the 36 by giving you a little HOW-TO… This how-to goes into the actual utilization of 3 X 5 cards and your own story and screenplay…

Did I say THOROUGH?

Hmmm. Other descriptive words also come to mind… Comprehensive. Conscientious. Dare I say almost encyclopedic?

In other words, if you’re a seasoned screenwriter, you may find yourself wanting to skip and or scan certain areas where the discussion tends to keep on going like the bunny in the commercial… God knows I did it here and there… Having said that, as time went on, I found myself going back to those very same passages that I had scanned some months earlier and read them with absolutely no interruptions. After reading them the second time around, I was glad I did. Dare I say that I picked up a few more insights to the craft and how to go about improving what I already know?

I dare.

So… If for no other reason than to jump start your own brainstorming when it comes to plotting out your story, Jeff’s book is worth the squeeze.

But there’s more…

Another outstanding chapter in the book: Chapter 4, The Enneagram: Creating Deep, Complex, and Distinct Characters.

You already know that I subscribe to the CHARACTER IS STORY mode of screenwriting so I took a special interest in this chapter… The is not Jeff’s invention of course but he does the same thing with it here that he did with the 36. He goes into the 9 personality types:

  1. The Reformer
  2. The Helper
  3. The Achiever
  4. The Individualist
  5. The Investigator
  6. The Loyalist
  7. The Enthusiast
  8. The Challenger
  9. The Peacemaker

–and within those 9 types, each type has 3 aspects:

Writing A Great Movie goes into each of the personality types… Giving adequate explanations about each personality type as well as going into their key motivations and rounding it up with some outstanding examples of those personality types so you can achieve focus on your own characters…

What I like best about Jeff’s discussion of each personality type are their character traits within each of the 3 aspects i.e., Healthy, Average, and Unhealthy. In other words, you quickly find out what is the best, worst, and average of each personality type. Outstanding material when it comes to giving your characters dimension.

Chapter 4 ends with Jeff using the Enneagram to analyze the characters in TRAINING DAY… Afterwards, he goes into the actual creation of a character, utilizing the Enneagram and lays out an additional 9 points of thought utilizing the Enneagram in your own scripts.

Eye opening reading and even IF you subscribe to different personality types as I personally do, these same 9 points of thought can easily be used within my own method of creating characters.

Really good stuff.

Writing A Great Movie does NOT get into traditional explanation of structure which was one of the other aspects I loved about this book… In other words, even if you find it a little too dry at times, it’s refreshingly DIFFERENT from the slew of screenwriting books out there on the market…

I found myself going back several times to gain a better understanding of Jeff’s discussion about DILEMMA. He does lay it out structurally but trust me… If you simply read his discussion of character dilemma and then threw the book away, you’d know more than 80% of the screenwriters working today.

Am I serious?

Deadly fucking serious.

Which takes me back to Chapter 1: Dilemma, Crisis, Decision & Action, and Resolution: Dramatizing a Plot

This is, WITHOUT A DOUBT, the very best analysis of DILEMMA you are ever going to read when it comes to screenwriting.

Bar none.

Jeff thoroughly goes into DILEMMA here… What it is… When it should approximately occur. When it reaches a CRISIS point which requires the Protagonist to make a decision and act, which of course leads to a final resolution. He of course gives examples of movies that use dilemma as a driving structural force i.e., TRAINING DAY, WHAT WOMEN WANT, MINORITY REPORT, THE GODFATHER, TOOTSIE, and BLADE RUNNER. Read these examples and I think you will definitely have a grasp of how important dilemma can be to your story.

*NOTE: I don’t think Jeff knew this but I attended one of his Screenwriting Expo workshops a couple of years ago and he discussed the use of DILEMMA in THE FIRM. It was this workshop that caused me to go back to the drawing board with my own form of structure and weave dilemma into it because yes, I think it’s that important.

Weaving Jeff’s analysis of dilemma into your own structure will certainly strengthen your story… No doubt about it but Jeff goes deeper with equal discussion of CRISIS and RESOLUTION and how all three work together to strengthen a plot.

Fascinating reading but I warn you up front… It’s more discussion oriented than it is HOW-TO. Don’t get me wrong… You’re definitely going to learn from this book but I suspect that a lot of screenwriters will find themselves wanting to skip to sections that get into the HOW-TO. Fine. Go ahead. I did it but do yourself a favor and go back and reread the material a few times from beginning to end because for me… It was the rereading that solidified the importance of Jeff’s book.

Not to breeze over the other areas of the book but the above discussions are what I found most profound inside Writing A Great Movie. Jeff also gets into THEME and the value of KNOWING your theme.

Last but certainly not least…

Chapter 7: Sequence, Proposition, Plot: Constructing and Tightening Your Plot

Once again, Jeff discusses his encyclopedic knowledge here but what I found most fascinating in this chapter was Jeff’s discussion of REVERSE CAUSE AND EFFECT. Most likely, a lot of us are doing this instinctively… i.e., know your ending first and work backwards in a CAUSE AND EFFFECT mode to brainstorm plot ideas. I know I’ve been doing this since the first day I started writing but in Writing A Great Movie, Jeff Kitchen deconstructs the process in a way that I think will make perfect sense for most of us writing movies today.

This is the first time I’ve seen the process broken down and explained and after I read it, I throroughly agreed with it since I’ve been doing it from the get-go. I think I probably received some kind of subconscious validation after reading Jeff’s breakdown of it…

What does that tell you?

Well, it tells me that Jeff knows screenwriting. It tells me that this is one of the books I tend to carry around with me. On some days, I’ve picked up Jeff’s book and simply read a couple of paragraphs and that information made something click in my head and made so much sense that I was immediately able to go back and tweak something I wasn’t feeling good about. Yes, Writing A Great Movie is that good.

*NOTE: Jeff also had someone send me his workshop on DVD. I was able to finally sit down and watch the DVDs after a couple of months of having read his book. The two really compliment each other and had I had BOTH the DVDs AND the book, I think my preference would have been to watch the DVDs FIRST and then read the book.

Why?

Because watching the DVDs got me very excited to learn MORE. Because I think I know myself fairly well… I’m almost positive I would have gotten more out of Jeff’s book on the first read if I had watched his DVDs first. Watching the DVDs and then reading the book seemed to make the book less… How do I say this?

Copious.

And I mean copious in a nice way… LOL.

Get the book AND the DVDs:

Jeff Kitchen’s Full Day Seminar

Unk

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Outlaws just aren’t outlaws anymore… I’ve been tagged!

Unk's Firebolt

So yeah, most of the time, I ride a motorcycle… Riding a motorcycle just about anywhere these days can be a high-risk adventure… Take today for instance… I’m on my way to my favorite coffee shop to sip on all day long but sure enough… Another dramatic event happens to me along the way.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m a pretty nice guy and I normally have an extremely long fuse but when you grow up the way I grew up, you tend NOT to let people get away with too much shit.

I’m riding my bike down a simple two-lane boulevard when up ahead of me, I see another fairly large guy on what my guess is of course a Harley-Davidson… Looks like a modified Fatboy which is cool.

I don’t ride cruising-style motorcycles… I like to go fast when I need to and while cruisers are quite comfortable, I just can’t get fucking used to them.

Now I need to preface the motorcycle rider creed a bit before I go on… I don’t know where it started but as long as I’ve been riding motorcycles on the road, motorcycle riders have been giving nods and or waves to each other since I can remember… I’m sure it started way before my time and I for one am happy to continue the tradition.

And I do.

So there I am… Riding down the boulevard and ahead of me, Mr. Wanna-Be Outlaw Biker… I only say this NOW because of what happened… I of course get ready to throw him the usual low-profile wave with my gloved hand and what does he do?

He rides past me .

“Hmmm,” I think… and flip a right there and follow the guy into a friggin KMart parking lot… He doesn’t even notice me but I’ve got him in my sights… He’s putting along, trying to locate a parking spot where I suspect, his bike will be the safest…

Neither one of us is wearing a helmet because we’re not in California at the moment… He’s got a , some kind of black t-shirt, black leather vest, black gloves, big black boots… You know the drill… All the usual, “I’m a bad Motherfucker” garb. I on the other hand am wearing an old Navy ballcap, a gray Navy t-shirt, a pair of olive drab and camo knee-lenth shorts. Yeah, I’m dressed for summer and I know to HIM, I don’t especially look too menacing hence, he flips me the BIRD. LOL.

I scoot right on up to him on my bike… Leave it running and walk over to him. He doesn’t see me until I’m almost on him. Then he turns around. I don’t wait for him to speak, I just say, “Hey Motherfucker, what’s your fuckin’ problem?”

Now this guy is wider than me (not by much) and about a head taller and I can immediately tell he’s used to getting his own way because of his size EXCEPT when normal-size motherfuckers decide not to take his shit…

He puts his hands up — starts backing up, “Hey, I don’t want any trouble, Man…”

“I just wanna know why you flipped me off, Asshole.”

“I thought you were riding a .”

“Huh?”

“A rice-burner. Most guys riding are riding rice-burners. You’re riding a Buell! Sorry, I didn’t know.”

A word of explanation here…

is in fact a division of . It’s for those of us who want to ride American but enjoy the nimble handling of a sport bike and TRUST ME… A Buell Firebolt owns the turns.

“So you just make it a habit of flipping off guys that ride rice-burners?”

“Uh… Yeah, I do.”

“Well I think you might want to be a little more careful… I almost sent you to the hospital. Or do you still wanna go?”

“Uh… No… No, I don’t.”

So in my cloud of testosterone, I sense he doesn’t want any and I turn around to go back to my bike… Biker Dude says, “I love Buells, Man!”

I flick it into first gear and motor out of the KMart parking lot… I didn’t want him to miss the .

So now I am sipping on my Americano… And it’s just right. Americano on the right hand side of my ‘puter and a on the left with a day’s supply of and .

But before I get to work…

and I never back down from a challenge…

This tag is a little different from what I’ve read before… Eight random facts or habits about themselves… Hmmm. Could be scary.

  1. I used to race motorcycles professionally.
  2. All my Mom’s friends used to hit on me when I was a kid. Some of them succeeded.
  3. I own three four-wheel drive vehicles.
  4. I like to eat breakfast late at night — early in the morning.
  5. I can cook anything and you’ll love it.
  6. I hate cell phones and beepers.
  7. I like to drive long distances and work out all my story problems with a digital recorder. Sometimes I end up in little towns all over the United States and meet very interesting people.
  8. I NEVER sweat the LOAD.

And since the is so fucking quiet lately… Let’s get it going with some more tagging… Don’t be a lightweight… Accept the CHALLENGE! 8 (EIGHT) random facts or habits about yourself… Stick it on your blog so we can all read it and weep…

Or laugh.

I’m TAGGING:

  1. (again… Hehehe.)
  2. (again… Sorry)
  3. (hey, that’s what you get for making a comment here)
  4. (hiatus my ASS!)
  5. (you’re not skating away that easy)
  6. (I don’t even know if you ever come here but I figure we’re both from NorCal… So maybe you’ll help a brother out)
  7. (I just wanna know more random stuff about you)
  8. (Surprised? Let’s hear the smack…)

Don’t out on us now… I know people.

Unk

Still alive and well

My Visual Pitch Summer Niche Contest

Just so you don’t think I’ve fallen into oblivion, I am still around… All of a sudden I have work coming out of my ears so I really have to get quite a few of these tasks completed before I can continue with Screenwriting Structure Part 3…

Some good stuff coming up though! Stay tuned.

On a POSITIVE note…

After literally thousands of unssuccessful and three successful hacking attempts on — we (meaning my tech guy and I) have finally patched up all the holes and have it back up and running and , we think it’s pretty secure…

Now watch the come back and kick my ass.

News?

Sure, there’s always some news, isn’t there?

I’m a little late in helping announce this but there’s a happening over at . You’ve got till August 24, 2007 to upload up to three or to their web site…

First Place prize is a $1000 and a consultation with me… In other words, I’ll read your script and give you some feedback on it good or bad. If it’s really good — you never know but it has to be REALLY FUCKING GOOD.

You know how I am with contests so at least I’m semi-involved with this one. No… I won’t lead you by the hand but if your script has potential, I’ll tell you. If it’s not something we’d be interested in… I’ll tell you. If it has potential but needs work, I’ll tell you. If you want to bust your ass on it (assuming it has potential), I’m willing to read and consider the final draft…

In the Scribosphere, some really good reading lately…

Over at :

Over at he mixes it up with his craft and politics…

Over at Bill Martell’s blog, he discusses what’s happening to him and it’s always great reading… Check out his web site: and buy his ! They’re worth every $5 bill I spent on them.

Emily Blake at always makes me laugh…

has gotta be the most bloggingest (is that a word?) screenwriter I know… How in the HELL do you do that?

Nick, the The World’s Greatest and Spatula from have been busy as hell not only writing but creating . Give it a look-see! Spat, what’s up with your blog?

Dave over at is on hiatus but there’s more than enough over there to keep you busy…

John August talks about his recent trip to Africa…

Craig of talking about the WGA…

If I missed anyone, let us know what you’re writing about in the comments…

Back to work… Screenwriting Structure Part 3 coming up soon!

Unk

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