So tonight American Idol had its season premiere (go J. Lo!) and I have a pretty good idea of what your response to that is. Who the f— cares! That show had its heyday a decade ago. It doesn’t have any influence in the music industry anymore. There’s 10 million other singing shows competing against it, depleting the talent pool and dimming the luster of anyone who wins the competition. Who gives a crap, right?
I’ll tell you who gives a crap. ME. Now you’re probably wondering why someone obsessed with screenwriting would give a rat’s melody about a reality show highlighting a bunch of caterwauling Katy Perry wannabes. Well, it’s the same thing that drew me to screenwriting in the first place. The idea of going from a nobody to a somebody. Just like how if you sing something amazing in front of the world, you become an instant superstar, if you write a great screenplay and the right person reads it, you can sell it for a million bucks. It’s one of the coolest things about this business.
Ah, but that’s not the real reason I’m obsessed with American Idol. No no no. I’m obsessed with it for a much darker reason. I watch it because the auditions so closely resemble the amateur audition process in screenwriting. Every time someone comes up to sing, it’s the same as when a script lands in an executive’s lap. This is their chance. This is their shot to prove to the world they’ve got it.
The big difference is that when you sing, it’s all out there for everyone to hear. Within seconds you know if the person’s good or not. With writing, the process is a little more complicated. It takes a few pages to figure out if the person’s got it. And if they don’t, the writer doesn’t get that direct feedback a singer does. They’re left in the cold, forced to interpret things through a quick e-mail or no reply at all. It’s one of the reasons writing is so tough. It’s difficult to get any quality feedback on your work.
But the thing that gets me so infatuated with Idol, is that the process for determining who’s got it in singing and who’s got it in writing is the same. It all comes down to the voice! Think about any singer you’ve fallen in love with. Think about your favorite singer right now. What first drew you to them? It was something different and unique about their voice, right? Maybe it’s the tone. Maybe it’s the pitch. Maybe it’s the way they emphasize certain phrases or play with certain chords. But mostly it’s something in their voice you hadn’t heard from any other artist before. From Eminem to Louis Armstrong to Adele to Lorde. You would never mix them up with any other artist, right?
And that’s the key phrase: “SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T HEARD BEFORE.”
I would love it every aspiring screenwriter would equate their writing to singing and ask themselves that question: “What is it about my voice that’s different?” What can I do with my voice that’s unlike any other voice out there? Because here’s the thing I see on American Idol. There are a TON of singers that are “good.” They’ve trained most of their lives. They’ve taken lessons. They’ve practiced their asses off. So when they sing, you nod your head and you say, “That was pretty good.”
But “that was pretty good” is the kiss of death. Nobody pays for “that was pretty good.” Nobody goes to a concert for “that was pretty good.” Nobody’s going to tell their friends about “That was pretty good.” You know it when you see these guys on American Idol. They’re forgettable. They’re aping artists we’re already heard and because they’ll never be as good as those artists, why would anyone want to hear them?
Aspiring screenwriters don’t seem to realize this for some reason. That they’re no different from these singers. They’ve done the training. They’ve read the books. They’ve written a bunch of screenplays. And still they’re getting no traction and they don’t know why. The reason is because they’re the writing equivalent of these guys going up for that audition in front of J. Lo, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr., that are “pretty good.”
Being the screenwriting-obsessed megalomaniac that I am, whenever I see these singers on Idol, year after year, I ask myself, “What can a writer do to make sure he isn’t the equivalent of that guy?” And the answer is: you gotta sound like the dudes/gals who are unique! You gotta establish your own voice! Just like that unique tone you hear in your favorite artist, you have to find that tone in yourself, that unique combination of prose, humor, subject matter, theme, dialogue, rhythm that makes your scripts sound like nobody else’s out there.
In order to make this analogy work, you kind of have to imagine walking in front of three judges and having them read your script out loud, then judging you. Would they read through the first five pages and think, “You know what? I’ve never heard something quite like this before?” Or would they say, “You know what? I’ve seen over a hundred movies with this exact same scene in them?” “I’ve read a hundred writers that write just like this?” Yesterday is a perfect example. Wes Anderson’s script, “My Best Friend.” If I read that out loud, myself and two other judges would remember it. It’s different. What’s different about you!?
You can apply this across all competitions. If you were a chef, what kind of dish would you make that’s unlike any other dish out there? You could make something as simple as mashed potatoes. But if you added a certain spice or a hint of some fruit or vegetable, that dish could go from ordinary to unforgettable. And that’s what you have with a screenplay. You literally have millions of ingredients to play with. So you don’t have an excuse for not trying to be different in some way.
Or, to make a more relevant comparison, think about your favorite directors. Go look at this trailer for Divergent. Quite possibly the most generic execution of a sci-fi film ever, right? Now look at this one. How much more memorable is that? If you were an executive and these two clips popped up in your e-mail, which director would you call back? It’s all about voice. It’s about somebody putting their unique interpretation on the direction of the film. That’s what you’re trying to do with a script – offer your own unique interpretation.
Maybe the best example of voice is this short movie I saw the other day. I will guarantee, 100%, that after you watch this movie, you will never ever forget it. Ever. Go ahead, watch it and tell me differently.
SOLIPSIST from Andrew Thomas Huang on Vimeo.
Unforgettable right? A unique voice, right? That’s what you want to do. You want to make it impossible for people to forget about you.
Okay, so to reiterate, what is it, not just in your current screenplay, but in ALL of your work, that makes you different? That makes your screenplays read differently than everything else out there? And I’m not saying it has to be like that short – 100% balls to the wall weird. It can be subtle. But it has to be SOMETHING. Or else you’re one of the thousands of people who get up on that stage in front of those judges for their big moment, and give a technically fine but ultimately forgettable performance. Identify that thing that’s unique in you (you might need to ask someone who knows you well to do this) and find a way to infuse that into your scripts. Remember, the worst thing you can be in art is forgettable. So please don’t let that be you.
