September 27, 2000
Screenwriters group exchange dialogue and script ideas
Members critique and encourage fellow hopeful television and movie genre writers
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
FADE IN
INTERIOR - HORIZON BOOKS BASEMENT, TRAVERSE CITY - EVENING
Three men sit around a table in the deserted caf‚, absorbed in their reading. Coffee cups akimbo, papers scattered and pens poised, two members of the Screenwriter's Group review a script. Not really reading, BRUCE MAKIE, a tall, dark-haired man with glasses, sits without fidgeting but with a palpable anxiety - he is the man on the spot.
The readers put down their pens, look up at MAKIE and smile.
In a real screenplay, this modest beginning would precede a few pages of dialogue - snappy, witty and revealing conversation that would set the tone for the rest of the movie. In that short time, using as few words as possible, a screenwriter would set the scene, bring these characters to life, introduce the main plot, hint at a subplot or two and designate the hero and villain. What in a novel would take paragraphs or even pages to describe is handled in a few lines.
In a screenplay, it takes much more than words to tell a story.
"There are a lot of things going on in a screenplay that you don't see in dialogue and on the screen," said Jim McKinney of Elk Rapids, a screenwriter who sold some screenplays years ago and keeps writing more. "There's always that subtext."
McKinney spent much of his career in advertising and marketing, but now works as a dealer at a casino to gather material for screenplays.
"Being in the casino is a source of endless stories," McKinney said. "People there are dramatic, funny, very human. All of the things I've done in my life - traveling around and meeting lots of people - I've never met as many people and gotten so intimate with them as at a casino."
Through the years as he worked 'day' jobs to support his family, McKinney always kept writing. Calling screenwriting a lonely craft, he continued churning out concepts and scripts always hoping to produce a selling movie or television series.
For the past year, McKinney has worked with other area screenwriters he met at a class he taught last fall on screenwriting through Northwestern Michigan College's Extended Education program. Fellow screenwriter Dave Murphy also taught a class that semester; together the classes drew an interested core of writers. Members of the Screenwriter's Group meet monthly to hone their craft, share their creative ideas and provide helpful critiques.
"This support group is very good, feedback from peers is crucial," said McKinney, who moved to Los Angeles in 1994 after a production company bought two of his scripts - then buried them. "It is very satisfying to work with other people, to help them, encourage them and share my experience with them. It's fun to know that there are other people out there creating things."
Members also swap ever-important contacts because it is no Hollywood myth, networking is the backbone of the industry.
"I am sending my script to a producer in Spain today," said Barry Couturier of Traverse City, who owns a benefits administration company. "The producer and I have a mutual friend - an accountant."
Couturier's horror script was born last year after he took a screenwriting class. A lifelong movie buff and a writer, he was increasingly frustrated by the diminishing quality of movies and decided maybe he could do better. Now working on his third script, he continues to master the subtleties of screenwriting.
"The hardest part is to get the plot to be coherent and plausible," Couturier said. "You see it when you go to a movie and see something you just don't buy - the movie loses its credibility. You have to walk that fine line between being creative and being credible."
The Screenwriter's Group meets the third Thursday of every month at 7:30 in the basement of Horizon Books. For more information on the group, call Jim McKinney at 264-8254.