Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:

Richard Walter: We want our lives to be boring. We want the art to be exciting. And you get that by finding the beginning and the middle of the end is just sight and sound. How about make every single sight and every single sound palpably, measurably move the, story forward?

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind StoryBeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us, as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and Entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m thrilled that my guest today, Richard Walter, is making his second appearance on StoryBeat. Richard is an author of best selling fiction and nonfiction, a celebrated storytelling educator, screenwriter, script consultant, lecturer, and retired professor who led the legendary screenwriting program in UCLA’s highly regarded Film school for several decades. He’s written scripts for the major studios and tv networks, lectured on screenwriting and storytelling, and conducted master classes throughout North America, as well as in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Madrid, Rio, Mexico City, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, and Hong Kong. His latest novel, Deadpan, follows the misadventures of a vaguely anti semitic West Virginia Buick dealer who wakes up one day transformed into the world’s most popular jewish comedian. I’ve read Deadpan and can tell you it’s an exceptionally funny ride with very serious overtones. This is one of the most imaginative time and character slipping stories I’ve read since Kurt Vonnegut’s slaughterhouse five. Richard’s other books include the novels Escape from Film school and Barry and the Persuasions. His nonfiction titles include the whole strategies for screenwriting, success in the new Hollywood the art, craft, and business of Film and television writing, and essentials of screenwriting. His books have been translated into eight languages. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m proud to say that I was fortunate to have been one of Richard’s students while I was attending UCLA’s graduate screenwriting program. You can find out much more about Richard and his work by subscribing to his podcast on Substack and his blog on medium. Once again, it’s a great honor for me to have the one and only Richard Walter as my guest on StoryBeat today. Richard, welcome back to the show.

Richard Walter: Could you say that all over again, please? Steve? No, I’m teasing. It was just such a beautiful introduction. Bless your heart. thank you. I’m delighted to be back, and I will say that I am the lucky one and that I have, for over 40 years, cross paths, been placed in such a position as a cross path with people who have the talent and the discipline and also the courage that it takes people like yourself to put it on the page. And, you know, nobody will ever criticize what you do if you don’t do it.

Steve Cuden: That’s for sure.

Richard Walter: Or if you don’t show it to anybody. So bless your heart. Thank you.

Steve Cuden: Well, thank you for being with me today. So let’s look at where you are now. I know you retired from teaching after 40 plus years. I guess a few years ago you retired. And I’m wondering if in the interim you’ve found your extra time to be creatively liberating or do you miss the grind of teaching?

Richard Walter: Well, I enjoyed teaching so much, but I really am glad to have time to work on my own stuff. And I have been busily writing. As I was saying, if somebody asked me, what do I do? And I can only say one thing, I’d say I’m a writer. And as we have discussed in the past, the, university, a research institution like the University of California considers teaching to be the second priority for faculty. So, not only I think that I’m a writer, but the university would call me that. Sometimes people would say, do they tolerate, you’re having, an independent career writing? And I’d say, no, they don’t tolerate it. That is to say, they don’t merely tolerate it. They really do require, that.

Steve Cuden: That’s because they’re a research institution and that’s part of the work.

Richard Walter: That’s right. At other institutions like California State university system, teaching comes first. Nothing wrong with that. But it is a, different criterion that takes, priority.

Steve Cuden: So I’m wondering, going back in time for you, what drew you to screenwriting in the very first place?

Richard Walter: Well, you know, I always advise writers, over the years, you know, to make an outline, but then throw that outline away and to stay open to the surprises. I never planned to become a university professor or even a writer. I, had just gotten a master’s degree back east at Syracuse, and I was going to continue there at, the Newhouse school of communications is going to continue there for PhD, I think, in the school of education. Instructional communications, they called it, which was as close as you could come to Film at that time. We’re talking mid sixties at that level at a university, at least at Syracuse. and I had, about six weeks or so to kill and I decided to just come m to California just to drive out here, which I did with the pal of mine. While I was here. I just happened to, you know, I just wanted to see the. See the West coast. And, while I was here, I visited the Film schools at USC and UCLA. In those days, it was very easy to get into Film school. There was no tradition of moving from the academic community into the professional world, unless you wanted to be an usher, you know, in a single screen movie theater, maybe. And, I mean, they were just knocking people down in the Street to try to get them to register for Film school. And I happened to run into the chair. I was not impressed. I actually went to UCLA to put up a card. This is the pre digital era, and I wanted to put up a card on the. And I did put up a card on the, ride, board, because I was looking for a partner to drive back with me to share the driving and also to pay for half of the gas. Gas cost, close to gallon, you know, not much. I needed somebody to share the, cost with me. And I decided to check out the Film school. Since I was there on the campus, I, happened to be just staying up Beverly Glen Canyon with family, friends, and the campus was nearby, so that’s why I went there to put the card on. And while I was there, I visited the Film school. And I wasn’t really very impressed, especially at the, the doctoral level. A great irony in my life is I am, a, radical dropout. You know, I never did register for the, file, the PhD. I got cocky after I had seen UCLA. Decided to check out, USC as well. So I drove over there and I just happened to run into the chairman and through, the late Bernard Cantor. Bernie Cantor. And through kind of reverse psychology, he was able to recruit me for, USC program to change the USC. He said, oh, you know, because I told him I’m in the program at Syracuse, who was thinking about maybe I should be out here, you know, at USC. And he said, oh, what have we got? You know, we have nothing compared to what Syracuse has. they have. Well, I’m not sure what they have, but we have. And he started to list all of the things and so on. And I realized I had a couple of days where I just realized I, I felt like I’d be betraying myself if I did the comfortable, safe thing. I had scholarships and assistantships and fellowships and those are just the ships, you know. I was making money as a student at Syracuse. And here I’d be giving that up and being in an unfamiliar place. But I knew that it was more awful not to do that than to do it.

Steve Cuden: Were you a big film watcher at that time?

Richard Walter: I come from a very artistic family. My dad, was a very successful musician. My son’s a musician. My sister was a movie star. And, you know, my cousin has her own dance company, and my uncle starred on Broadway and Fiddler on the roof for years. I always was involved with the arts. My, parents exposed me to all of that. But I’m not a buff. I’m not a movie buff. And, somebody was asking me about films over the nineties, and, I couldn’t think what, you know, films were made in the nineties. In fact, it’s funny, it must have been a slow news day, because just, you know, late in 1999, I got a call from a reporter because I have a fancy title at UCLA, and I’m good with sound bites, you know, they could ask me, he said he wanted to know what I thought was the best film of the nineties, right? And, I thought to myself, m first of all, like, let’s see, which films were in the nineties, and, which, one was the best? And, suddenly I had an insight. It’s one of the most profound insights that I’ve ever had. I believe it occurred to me that in this gigantic, vast universe, and, you know, theoretical mathematicians and astronomers, astrophysicists, tell us that it’s just one of an infinite number of parallel, such multiverses, you know, in all of that vastness, that unthinkable, unimaginable vastness, there is absolutely not one single thing that is less important than what I think was the best movie of the nineties. So I decided, oh, screwed it. I was just going to blurt out something, and I said Terminator two, and I said Terminator two for two reasons. One reason was, I’m a Film professor. I’m supposed to name. I shouldn’t be naming some Hollywood blockbuster, you know, the chapter in a franchise. I should be citing some obscure bulgarian filmic tone poem, you know, that doesn’t cop to the story and audience, but, you know, just explores texture and God alone knows what else, you know, and prove how intelligent, I am. and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be a little outrageous. And I would say to writers, be a little outrageous, you know? But the other reason is I really thought that Terminator two is a brilliant, brilliant movie.

Steve Cuden: It is indeed.

Richard Walter: It has tremendous, insights into the nature of, the human condition. Very notably at the end, when, Terminator. When Arnold is becoming human, what is it that’s making him human that tells him that it’s human. And that is the ability to feel. He can actually feel robots, terminators can’t, but humans can. And what he feels is what, you know, good and not good. And I think it suggests people watching this movie, Terminator two, even though they may not be aware of it later on when they come into heartache and grief and frustration and disappointment. And nobody gets through this. This valley without. Without some of that.

Steve Cuden: That’s for sure.

Richard Walter: Maybe it’ll give them some solace and some support to realize that what’s really going on is they’re just being human. They’re having the experience of what it’s like to be human. So I will say I reject. One thing that you’ve endured hearing me say over the years on campus. Is I don’t believe in genre. I just think there are two genres, and that’s good movies and bad movies. And what’s a good movie? Omaha The Movie is one that’s engaging. You see something that happens in the beginning of the movie and you want to see more. And a bad one is not, you know, which is, you know, most artists that way. It’s not really all that successful in terms of meriting the time and the attention of people. Let’s not even talk about the money for the ticket price of a movie in that light.

Steve Cuden: I’m wondering, do you see any distinction between a writer who writes prose, like you have done numerous times, or. And a writer who writes screenwriting, other than the form itself on a page? Do you see any difference between a screenwriter and a novelist or a screenwriter and a prose writer?

Richard Walter: I do. Well, I see differences between the writing. I like to think good writers, you know, can do both. but it may surprise some people listening. I think that one of the big differences between novels and, screenplays. Is that novels are easier.

Steve Cuden: They are easier even though they’re longer.

Richard Walter: Well, longer is easier, yes. You know, there’s a famous letter, from, Hemingway, to his legendary editor, Max Perkins. Yeah. He says, you know, he writes this long, long, long letter. Nine pages, I think. And then at the end he says, well, that’s about it for now, Max, please forgive me for writing such a long letter. I just didn’t have the time to write a short one. And, you know, there’s a story also about Abraham Lincoln, you know, before he was president, when he was just a local politician. The, Netflix of the era was, you know, political speeches. People would come to town and then give a speech on something or a lesson on something. And he was asked to fill in for somebody at the last minute. Suddenly Lincoln was, because of a blizzard or maybe, the guy got sick or something like that. And so they asked him if he could, on very short notice, fill in. He said, well, how long do you want me to do? If you want me to do, ten or 15 minutes, I’m going to need some time to prepare. If you want me to do an hour, I’m ready right now. So I think it’s easier to write long than short. Also, you’re limited in a screenplay to just sight and sound. A screenplay is an elaborate list of just two kinds of things. And those two things are what you see and what you hear from the point of view of the writer. What you hear. I mean, there’s all kinds of soundtracks on a movie, but from the point of view of the writer, it’s almost all the dialogue and, what you see, that’s what the actors do. So there’s action and dialogue and that’s really it. With a novel, you can. You’re also stuck in the numbing, ever present present tense, even if it’s Star Thrower wars, which is set in the future. Or is it long ago and,

Steve Cuden: In the past, in a galaxy far.

Richard Walter: Away and, you know, quest for fire is thousands of years ago or whenever. But movies unfold, all movies unfold in the present tense, and that can be really rather a burden. And then, you know, you can get away with excursions of the descriptions and things like that in a novel that you cannot in a screenplay. You know, a description of a waterfall, for example, in a screenplay is as follows. Waterfall. I mean, that’s it. They’re going to photograph it. If you start to talk about how the prismatic, light, you know, forms, above the foam, how the fluid weeps across the crag, granite, rock face and so on, and it just says amateur, amateur, amateur to the reader of the. Of the screenplay.

Steve Cuden: well, the screenplay is a blueprint for a movie that’s not yet made. And a novel is the complete work.

Richard Walter: Yes. And there’s nothing wrong with the. With the screen. It’s not like a lower form.

Steve Cuden: No, not at all.

Steve Cuden: and it’s just not literature.

Richard Walter: Yes. These are both legitimate ways, but they are different ways. But, what really unites them is narrative. They’re all. All about stories. You want to. That’s what audiences want. They want to hear a good story

Steve Cuden: Characters in conflict with other characters.

Richard Walter: Yes, yes. You know, somebody asked me, what do you think is more important, character or StoryBeat? And I said to him, what do you. What’s more important to you? Your heart are your lungs. I mean, this character doesn’t exist outside of story And what is a story except what the characters do and say? What is a character except what she does and what she says? Not only in your dramatic narrative, but what about in Life, you know?

Steve Cuden: Absolutely.

Richard Walter: I look at my own character now. I’m elderly, and, I’d, love to believe I’m a moral, principled person, but I see many places where I fell short, betrayed myself and my ethical, principles and so on.

Steve Cuden: I would say you’ve done okay.

Richard Walter: Thank you. Thank you. You know, there’s a wonderful book that’s very not well known on screenwriting by Millard, Kaufman, who was a screenwriter, and he says, I think it’s really a great insight that character is the way people feel. they are guided by emotions and by principles that are very connected to, biology. It’s more important to understand than to be understood. So character and story are really two parts of the same thing.

Steve Cuden: Impossible to have one without the other, I think.

Richard Walter: Right. In fact, sometimes I hear about workshops, character workshops, where people create characters outside of the context of a story And, you know, I’m polite about it when people tell me about it, but I just think it’s dilettante nonsense. You don’t create the characters in advance and then make up a story for them. It all happens simultaneously. All happen together.

Steve Cuden: Simultaneous, yes.

Richard Walter: And it’s a discovery also for the writer. In the very first script I wrote, I still remember, I was a student myself at USC Film school, and I realized after writing the first draft that I had the wrong protagonist. There were these two young men in the script, and one was the protagonist, and the other was sort of the anti. I realized, no, no, no. this is the other guy’s story And you might think, gee, what a waste. I wasted that. No, but that was not a waste. I needed to do that to see that that was the case.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the process. You’ve got to go through it in order to discover things.

Richard Walter: That’s right. And you can’t figure it out in advance. Yes. I’ll say it again. I do believe in outlining, but then I think you have to let your outline go away. And if your, story runs off the rails, that’s probably a good thing. you know, off the rails is there’s a children’s. I’m reading a children’s book to my grandchildren about a train that runs off the. Of the rails. You know, it’s much more interesting than being constrained by rails. You know, writers just have to take their chances and recognize that. God bless us all. We can rewrite. We can rewrite. And that’s really what it. What it’s all about.

Steve Cuden: Because when you’re on the rails, you know in advance where you’re going to wind up, and you don’t want the audience to know where you’re going to wind up.

Richard Walter: Exactly right. Exactly right.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk about your book, deadpan, which I think is absolutely phenomenal. Great fun, very unexpected. I did not expect it to be quite so very out there. It’s quite out there and very interesting and very funny. So I gave the tiniest of blurbs in your introduction here, but I’m wondering, can you tell the listeners what your take on the book is? What is the book about?

Richard Walter: Well, the book, you know, it’s a story I wasn’t trying to, do anything other than to tell a story If I were still a professor, I would say it’s an homage to Kafka. Since I’m now gone from the university, I say I stole it from Kafka. There’s a famous, story that most people. People know called the metamorphosis.

Steve Cuden: Yes.

Richard Walter: And in which a man wakes up out of the blue, to discover that he’s been transformed into an insect. And I thought to myself, what else could you wake up as transformed into what if you woke up as, the world’s most famous comedian? You know? And then because so many comedians are Jews, it occurred to me to make them a jew. And I was writing this. It’s funny. my editor and the director of heresy press, Bernardin, said to me, when I submitted the, Manuscript, to him, he praised it to the skies. Indeed. They went ahead and published it. he said that it just flows so smoothly that he read it in a single afternoon. And it looks like I wrote it in a single afternoon. Well, I’m working on this movie, this screenplay, and I like to think there’s a movie in it, too, this novel. For 50 years, you know, in 1973, there was conflict in the middle east. Sound familiar? There were gas lines. there were disruptions in the gas supply. And there were some outbreaks of anti semitism at that time. And that made me think, gee, why don’t make the guy a jewish comedian. And make the guy who becomes a jewish comedian somebody who’s vaguely anti semitic. You asked me what it’s about. I don’t think you know what a book is about or a movie’s about until you finish and you look back and you see what it is. But I think what this is about is that racism and bigotry, sure, arsonists and murderers and torturers, violent, violent criminals are a terrible problem. But there’s a bigger problem that’s quieter and, that is the enabling of it that goes on. We just tend to go along with things. And, I shudder when I think about all the things that I’ve gone along with over my life. And I could make a list of things I’m going along with right now that aren’t really right. And I’m just, you know, being selfish and living my life. So I was trying to point out how each of us is to some extent, bigoted. I think that the way to confront that and to deal with it is not to deny it, but to recognize it and own it and work with that in that fashion. I wrote out the novel, you know, based on that idea back then in the seventies.

Steve Cuden: This story’s been around for that long? For 50 years.

Richard Walter: Yes, I wrote it. I wrote the original, draft in the early to mid seventies.

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing.

Richard Walter: And it’s funny because, I was primarily working in the screenwriting market, the freelance screenwriting market. I was doing well. I was supporting a family. I didn’t have to drive a cab or carry a tray. Nothing wrong with either of those things. But I was able to actually make money, good money, as a, writer. I got into a disagreement with my agent. I’ll spare you the details, but I can tell you now he was right and I was wrong. I had acted badly, and they wanted to get rid of me. And I knew I could get another agent. And I told them, listen, I can get another agent, but I want you to be my agent. I’ve been a moron and a fool. I apologize. If you will, keep me on as your client, I’ll let you do the agent thing, and I’ll just do the writing. I had been interfering again. So he said, well, I want to see this thing deadpan. Because I had described it to him. It was in progress. I said, well, just not ready. he said, I want to see it. So I showed it to him and he just was blown away by it. And he, wanted to send it to paramount in that form. Incomplete and really very rough draft. And he sent it over there. I still. I have here, in a fly alone just over a short distance away from where I’m sitting right now, the coverage from Paramount. And it just says, this is the greatest thing we’ve ever. It’s like my mother wrote it, except my mother wouldn’t have been that enthusiastic. First priority, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, they just loved it to death. This happens. That happens. This happens. And then he said, I still remember the story analyst who was covering it for Paramount was saying, that suddenly the, the incomplete Manuscript trails off. But clearly what has to happen is. And now he starts to write the rest of the book for me. And I remember saying to the agent, you know, we should just have this covered all around town and have the, the coverage people, you know, write the book for us in any minute. I got responses like that over the years. What I never got was a nickel or an offer of a contract. My favorite saying about Hollywood is from Dorothy Parker. She says, hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement. I got so much encouragement, but I never, never got a deal. And, now I’m retired. And, you know, this is like six, three, four, five years ago, pandemic lockdown and all of that. I can’t tell you how much, you know, the joke about a professor retiring is like when a professor goes on sabbatical. The question is, how do they know the difference? you know, the truth is we work hard. I work very hard. But it’s a very flexible schedule. You really do have control of your time. I got a call at the beginning of the pandemic from that agent, that first agent from half a century earlier wanting to know whatever happened with deadpan. and it made me think over the days to come, that followed, gee, if he’s thinking about it all those years, I ought to take another look at this. And indeed, I did get caught up in it, and I really did, I hate to say enjoy. I always tell writers, if you enjoy what you do and don’t admit it, don’t tell anybody that. Whenever a writer tells me, oh, everything is going wonderful, they’re so excited and everything’s falling together. It’s just like it’s writing itself. I always say the same thing, something like, well, wonderful, congratulations. that’s great. And I always think the same thing, which is amateur, amateur. I mean, I crossed paths with some of the most distinguished, the richest, the most successful writers, you know, on the planet. And my position at UCLA and. And as a writer in the Hollywood community for half a century. And the real champions are not pleased with the way anything came out.

Steve Cuden: Exactly.

Richard Walter: In fact, our friend Hal Ackerman, whom you know, Washington, colleague of mine on the faculty, he was talking to Julius, Epstein. The late Julius Epstein. Julius Epstein wrote Casablanca. And Hal said something to him like, oh, how thrilling to meet you all. I or any of my Film phony pals. All we hope for is once in our lives we should touch something like Casablanca. you know, like you did. And, that’s Bigger Than we are. That’s timeless and eternal. And wouldn’t be great if I told you that Epstein had said, oh, thanks very much. Kind of you to say that, but he’s a writer. He said, ah, casablanca, master blanket. They screwed that up. He had this. He was in California for seven years, but he had this Brooklyn accent. He said, you know, the scene where, blah, blah, blah, my brother and me wanted. But no, no, here he is griping and fetching about how they ruined his movie. What movie? Casablanca. And all I could think is, boy, I wish somebody would ruin my movie. you know, like they ruined.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, no kidding.

Richard Walter: So I finished the draft. Got a good draft. I had expanded it somewhat. It was really. I thought it was too short in the form that it was in originally. And then, astonishingly, I could not get anybody even to look at it. You know, this is my 6th published book. My previous novel was escape from Film school. You mentioned it earlier from St. Martin’s Press. It was a bestseller, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Now, that’s advanced in its first printing. It, went to multiple printings in cloth and trade paper, as they call them in the publishing, business. My non fiction books, my screenwriting books are with the world’s largest publisher, Penguin Random House. their plume imprint, they’ve been imprint for 35 years. You know, that’s unheard of. And I’ve sold over 100,000 copies of those books. I tell you about that. Not to brag about it, though it’s worth bragging about, but to tell you that notwithstanding that, my own agents, who represented my previous book and made money of it, would not even respond to a query. The fact of the matter is, an agent I know showed me a letter that had been sent to a writer, a rejection letter that said, we love this. We just think it’s fascinating, what you’ve written here, but we just don’t think this is the time to publish another book by a white man.

Steve Cuden: Oh, really?

Richard Walter: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, too, because I’m a champion for diversity. You know, when I got to UCLA, before you were there, it was a white boys club. And as you know, by the time you came, it was a very diverse group.

Steve Cuden: Very.

Richard Walter: I believe in it. Not just because it’s principled and moral, but it’s interesting, definitely. There’s a wide variety of tastes and textures and tones. That’s not God’s mistake. It’s testimony to her genius.

Steve Cuden: When I was there, it was at least half women. And there were multicultural, cultural in every direction in general.

Richard Walter: But in medical schools and in law schools in particular, it’s mainly women, a majority of women. And in the, in publishing, in fiction, women are a vast, majority of the, titles. New York Times Sunday book section last, Sunday, I think of the top ten books, eight of them fiction, were written by women. The, worst I’ve seen over the last number of months, there were, like, six majority, of six. Over four, you know, women to men. I’ve seen some weeks where it was, all of them were by women, and yet they don’t want to publish this white guy’s voice. It’s funny, I said to them, to some of them, I had said, you know, I’m a hearing impaired. That, is to say disabled senior. You know, I’m a member of a marginalized group. They didn’t. Nobody. Nobody bought that, Steve. I queried 50 agents.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Richard Walter: And only three or four even responded at all with polite rejections.

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing.

Richard Walter: That is to say, refusals even to consider the typescript, the book deadpan. And I really was. You know, it’s like, God is good, and I have enough money. It’s not like I’m trying to make my rent. But I figured nobody’s going to feel sorry for me. I’ve had a good run here. But then I read in the. In the newspaper, in the New York Times, in Pamela Paul’s column. She’s a regular opinion writer for the Times. She was writing about this new publisher, heresy press, and, Bernard Schweitzer, whom I mentioned earlier, who’s its director, its founder and, my editor. And they were looking for. That’s another thing about deadpan. It deals with the most controversial issue of our era, which is, racial and religious identity, definitely. And you think that would make it appealing? No. People are afraid of that subject in the business. They don’t want to publish stuff like that. It’s really, really, kind of depressing if you believe in free expression and, the value of print. I looked them up on the web, and I found a submissions portal and wrote a sexy little, nifty little, query and included, as they instructed, the first, I don’t know, a couple of dozen pages maybe, of the typescript. And I sent that in on a Friday. On Monday, he wrote back saying, this is just beyond brilliant. Please send me the rest of it. I thought it was a hoax, frankly. I thought Hal Ackerman, whom I referred to earlier, another pal of mine, is playing some kind of trick on me. And, he said, he wants to see the rest of the book. So I sent it to him. And on Thursday, two days later, I remember on Monday, he calls me. I sent it to him on Tuesday, and on Thursday they offered me a contract.

Steve Cuden: that’s fantastic.

Richard Walter: I only wish it weren’t so timely again. I think a big mistake writers often make, especially new writers, is to try to guess the trends. and, you could think that there’s a trend in the public attention and so on, bigotry and so on, but, that’s not what was driving me. it’s become very timely. I regret that. I’m very concerned about the wave of hatred that I see spilling across the planet, but that’s the way the book actually got traction.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, I don’t think that that’s going to hurt your sales, and I don’t think it’s going to hurt you. The book is timely, curiously enough, 50 years later after you first conceived it. And yet here it is, perfectly timed for the times in which it’s being published. I think that’s really great. So I need to know. I myself am somewhat known for having adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde into a Musical that’s played on Broadway twice and around the world. And I’m curious, in this book, in deadpan, you have a character that is actually two, just like Jekyll and Hyde, although not good and evil a little bit, but not really. they’re just two different people. I’m curious if you could describe for the listeners what the differences are. The real differences are between Richie. Richie, which is an interesting name, and Dwight bridges.

Richard Walter: Well, what the book is really about is what they share. We seem to be so different, but we really have much more in common than what separates us. The book is really about identity. Here’s a guy who wakes up and he doesn’t know who he is. He tries to explain who he is to people, and they all say it along with him. It’s his routine. He’s a hugely successful comedian because, who does this routine, which is to claim that he is the person that he actually believes he is. There’s an interesting, at the Manson trial. At the Manson trial, you know, Charles Manson, the murders in, Benedict Canyon half a century ago. When they went on trial, Manson’s lawyer was a notorious obstructionist. He believed that if you have a dreadful, dreadful client, the only way you can, and they don’t get more dreadful than Charlie. The only way you can serve him is to delay, object, obstruct. And so he was a notorious obstructionist. He would object to anything. And the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, whom I came to know because, we had the same agent, he wrote a very good book about it with a writer named. Oh, now, I want to say Ken Hertzfield, but I’m not sure who the.

Steve Cuden: But you’re talking about Helter skelter.

Richard Walter: Yes, helter skelter. During the trial, Vince calls a witness to the stand for the prosecution, and he says to the witness, would you state your name for the record? That’s the first thing that he asks. Objection. Irving Canaryk, Manson’s lawyer, is objecting. And the judge says, you object the witness stating his name for the record. Absolutely right, your honor. You heard me correct. So the judge said, you know, trying to maintain his cool and his calm. You want to share, you know, with the court? You know, California, nobody tells anybody anything. We just share everything. Would you share with the court any kind of foundation in support of that? Objection. He said, certainly hearsay. How does he know what, his name is? How does. Except it was told to him by other people, his parents, and, well, the judge dismissed that. objection. You can be sure. But it is an interesting question. How do we know we are who we really are? You mentioned all the places I travel around the world. I never, ever, ever stood up in front of a group to lecture at UCLA or in Rio de Janeiro or Shanghai or Beijing without a voice somewhere in the back of my head saying, what are you. No, what are you doing here? You don’t know anything about this? Why are these people listening to you? How much of who we are is based on what we actually are from inside us, our flesh and our blood and our spirit? And our, soul and all of that, and how much of it is a product, of what’s reflected back to us from other people. That’s what I think Life is all about. It’s this alien thing which is our identity is imposed upon us. And we resist it at first, but, then we come to, embrace it and find it. And finally, I really think that’s what writing is about. In my old age, I used to think, you know, most writers think, here’s. Here’s a, Let’s say it’s a screenplay. I got 100 minutes. Most movies are too long, a couple of hours or longer. But, I got to put stuff in there, you know, to occupy that. Then I realized stage two, stage two of three phases, is no, no, no, it’s not about putting stuff up there on the narrative line. It’s about taking stuff away and finding something that’s. That’s already there. I never knew a writer, and nobody knows. More writers has crossed paths with more writers than I have, thanks to my experience, over the decades, working with other writers on and off, off campus. But I never knew a writer who wasn’t surprised by something that a character said. A line that she might see appears to have come up with herself in a bit of action. These things do take on bit of action that the writer didn’t really plan. These things do take on a kind of a, life of their own, don’t they?

Steve Cuden: They do indeed.

Richard Walter: In the same way that Michelangelo says he. He found the David, the David, you know, they brought down this piece of marble from the quarry and he looked at it and he could see the David in there and he just took away the stuff that wasn’t part of that. And that’s what I think we’re doing, increasingly as writers. But now I have a third take on it, which is, it’s not about really finding the story and finding the characters as it is about letting them find you. Get out of your own way and see what happens and stay open to the surprises.

Steve Cuden: So the Oscar winning writer Callie Curry, who wrote Thelma and Louise, once famously said, and I’m probably botching the exact quote, but it’s close enough. Find the quiet to hear the characters talking in your head.

Richard Walter: I love that. I, crossed paths bunches of times with carrier moderated. It’s funny, when Film and Louise were up for a, was up for a. The Oscar witch, it won. I remember moderating a discussion with her at the writers. The writers go, that’s a great statement. Yeah, I agree with her completely when I say she’s exactly right. What I mean is, I agree with her completely. She doesn’t need me to agree with her, but I do.

Steve Cuden: Among the descriptions of deadpan are the words magical realism. Can you explain for the listeners what magical realism is?

Richard Walter: Well, it’s stuff that’s described as if it’s real. That’s not unlike, like, a fairy tale. You know, the pumpkin, turns into a carriage, and the mice turn into horses or something like that. In, Cinderella or Snow white or something like that. That’s magical. But it’s not realism. Magical realism is stuff that actually could, for example, in deadpan, the shah of Iran shows up, you know, and flies in a helicopter. it’s funny, you know, one of the things I’m proudest of about the book is in one of my books, one of my screenwriting books, I’m talking about what we’ve talked about a little earlier in this discussion, and that is letting, go of your plans, you know, not being a slave to some sort of an outline. But that said, you can’t just do Crazy stuff like whatever comes to mind. For example, and I said specifically, you can’t just suddenly, for no reason, cut to the 1955 World Series in Brooklyn between the Dodgers and the Yankees. You can’t do that. So I decided I would do that. I would do what I myself, not only they, but I say that you, that you can’t do. And I, wasn’t sure that people would buy that, you know, I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t just escaping the reality. Kafka never explains how the guy got turned into a beetle. But if somebody said that to me.

Steve Cuden: In context in the book, Richard, it works perfectly.

Richard Walter: Thank you. I appreciate it. It really is, a miracle to me how it all came out. I still am surprised when I read through it. I do see things, I think all writers do. I want to change this. I want to change that. This word and that word. I should have reversed this and so on, but it does seem to engage. and then again, it’s funny. I’m trying to. I’m trying to be funny about. I’m trying to write something that’s laugh out loud funny. That’s said in the world of comedy. But that’s about a very, very dark and unfunny subject, which, again, is, it is bigotry and, race hatred and religious hatred and the dark side of the human condition.

Steve Cuden: So the story flits from one very different location to another via a device you’ve, I assume, made up, called a positron emission muon ionic holographic teletransporter. You made that up, I assume?

Richard Walter: Yes, I did. I did. You know, it’s funny. I wonder, how are people gonna. What if I put a device in here, you know, and I’ll just make up something that makes it happen? And I was, to some extent, inspired by big Golden, I forget the name of the writer. Wonderful, wonderful writer. And I’m ashamed that I can’t say his whole name, but in it, if you’ve seen the movie, it’s years and years ago, Tom Hankshe suddenly changed into a, you know.

Steve Cuden: You’re talking about Gary David Goldberg.

Richard Walter: Yeah. is it Goldberg? I’m not sure that it’s. It’s Goldberg, but close to that. If not. If not that, right? And, if you saw the movie, you remember at the beginning, there’s like a, you know, how does this kid get turned into a, man?

Steve Cuden: Exactly.

Richard Walter: And it happens at an arcade. There’s some kind of a crazy fortune telling machine. And people, audiences say, okay, that’s how that happened. Now, I’m going to go with this, story and people do seem to go with the, magical realism. The people who’ve spoken to me about the book, I myself have always worried about it. I’ve always wanted to pay it off. I know that I would. When I say, you know, Kafka never paid it off. If somebody said that to me, I would say, you know, it’s better if other people, rather than the author himself, compares himself to Kafka. You know, let other people invoke, invoke names, names like that.

Steve Cuden: You know, it somehow seems like it could be some form of science fiction, but it’s not a science fiction book at all. And yet it has that little satirical science fiction part of it.

Richard Walter: Sure. Well, again, that’s why I don’t like the whole notion of genre. Is it commercial fiction? Is it literary fiction? come on. It’s just good books and bad books. now, there’s a woman librarian, who wrote a wonderful book called book lust, and she says, you must give a book 50 pages. If you don’t like it, you can abandon it, but you at least got to give it 50 pages. She says, however, when you become 50 years old, for every year that you. That you get older, you can take up one page off, you know, so I can’t wait on another 20 or so years. I won’t have to read an effing thing. You know, the point is, I start to read something, and it either engages me or it doesn’t. And I used to feel guilty. Come on, stick with this. See this through. No, wait a minute. It’s the obligation of the writer to make me stick with it. Make this worth my sticking with. Make me want to stick with it. I was just reading this writer, Jon McPhee. He’s one of my favorite writers. He’s now 90. I read like a 50, 60,000 word piece that he wrote. It was in several editions, ten or 15 or 20 years ago in the New Yorker about something I care about. Not at all, which was geology, plate tectonics. Why did I read that whole thing? Because from the very beginning, I got caught up in the craft of the language. It’s just astonishing. there’s a very famous editor, I forget her name now. She’s just died at age 98. She was still an active editor at age 95. She edited some of the great voices of the. The last century and the mid century and the late century and the early, new millennium. And she was asked on the occasion of the 90th birthday, what do you look for in a Manuscript? And she said, the first thing I want to know is, does it work at the sentence level? You can’t structure a good sentence. How are you going to structure a whole StoryBeat? You know, I’ll give a few pages to something, but if it doesn’t involve me, if it doesn’t integrate me, if I find I’m forcing myself, then I’ll move on to something else. And I have had no trouble, you know, getting. And I’m doing a lot of reading now and really, really enjoying, what I’m, what I’m reading. And it’s very widely varied. You know, I’m reading fiction, I’m reading nonfiction, I’m reading history, I’m reading a lot of biographies and so on. Again, good writing, or bad writing? I just read good writing.

Steve Cuden: So you also feature any number of real Life characters in the book, like Mel Brooks and the Shah Varenn, like you already mentioned, and Don Rickles and Jerry Lewis and Milton Berle and so on. I’m just curious, did you intend to have them in the book? Was that in the beginning you wanted to have it be in the real world and the fictional world at the same time?

Richard Walter: The short answer is yes. I’ve always found, when comedians get serious about comedy, it’s laughable, but not in the way they want it to be. And I did years and years ago work, for Jerry Lewis, believe it or not. He was a professor at USC, and I was this ta. And then he hired me, as a dialogue director on, one of his last movies at Warner Brothers a half a century ago. And I loved him dearly. He was very, very generous to me and very supportive of me. But he was also, terribly afraid, that his stuff wasn’t any good. And he was ashamed that he didn’t have a, a degree, though. He was a very bright guy. And he was never more ridiculous. And comedians are never more ridiculous than when they discuss comedy seriously. So I thought I would have some, some yucks with that. And I must say, I didn’t enjoy that. I always tell people, if you want to read the book before you read that chapter, I think it’s chapter 14, empty your bladder.

Steve Cuden: I think you’re very, very good in the book at setting tone within the story Can you define for the listeners who don’t know, what is story tone and how did you go about achieving it?

Richard Walter: What a great question. It’s not something that you really think, about. Again, if you get conscious, if you start thinking about what you’re doing, you lost, in all creativity. you watch Baryshnikov, the dancer, prance. Of course, it looks like he just showed up. You know, that he put in 10,000 hours training to, for sure, to be able to make it look like it happened spontaneously. It seems to me that, if what I’m describing in the book is pretty spectacular, which is to say, showbiz war in the Middle east, the transformation of this guy into a comedian, it’s all very fanciful and Crazy. The language should be very everyday business as usual. It should be grammatical and readable. I tell you again, the sentence level you can open up. We got, over the years at UCLA, hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of applications of the program every year. We only had room for a couple of dozen students. Easier to get in the Harvard medical School. How do we review all of that material? Well, we did review it, but we didn’t exactly memorize it. And you can open up a screenplay to the middle and see, whether or not this person can write a sentence and see whether or not you get caught up in it, you know, look, I happen to stumble upon my favorite movie. There’s nothing more boring than a Film professor who thinks that Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made. And that’s my position. And I happen to stumble upon Cain on turner classics or something came in on the middle of it. And right in the middle of it, I get caught up in the movie, just like you would if you read the script. Once again, it’s about the writing.

Steve Cuden: It is, in fact, totally about the writing. You’ve already alluded to that deadpan was started in your mind’s eye as a movie, right? It started as a script.

Richard Walter: I. Yes.

Steve Cuden: And you drafted it out. So do you think that there’s a chance it could someday become a movie again?

Richard Walter: I do. I think that there might be a bankable player who would want to play that role. The protagonist, the guy who’s a comedian and also a Midwest, auto dealer. But one thing I’ve learned over the years in Hollywood is you can’t really hold a good story back, you know, and you never know how things are going to, you’re going to pay off.

Steve Cuden: You know, I can think of a number of people who would be fantastic for that dual part.

Steve Cuden: I think Ben Stiller would be amazing. Robert Downey junior would be amazing. There are a number of them.

Richard Walter: Yeah. I like to think Bryan Cranston.

Steve Cuden: Bryan Cranston, sure.

Richard Walter: somebody said Sasha Baron Cohen. you know, the problem is if there’s no deal that, you know, the management doesn’t want them to look at it if. But again, you have to forget about all that. You just have to sort of see what happens. We were talking about trends before. I remember in 83, the biggest picture was Beverly Hills cop at my advanced screenwriting workshop that you took at UCLA. At the first session where I would have everybody review their stories, real briefly, just a few sentences. What they were going to write, the screenplay they were going to write that academic quarter. I remember saying that what everybody wants now is Beverly Hills cop. That’s the smartest thing to write there. All the agents looking at the studios are looking for that. Therefore, don’t do it. It’ll be one of 60 action cop Buddy melodramas that are out there. Don’t be smart, be stupid. Nobody’s doing westerns. write a western, it’ll be the only one that’s out there. And also, don’t writers focus on the sale of the script? They don’t understand that all kinds of benefits can come from the script that doesn’t sell. And a script can sell 20 years down the, down the pike. One of the students in the class wrote a western and it was a funny western, it was a comic western. And I recommended it to my, my old roommate from back east, Andy Bergman. Andy is the guy who originated blazing saddles. And he has story by credit and he shares with Mel Brooks and some of the other writers, including some other.

Steve Cuden: Writers, including Richie Pryor and Norman Steinberg, who’s been on this show.

Richard Walter: Oh, wow.

Steve Cuden: the late, great Norman Steinberg.

Richard Walter: He’s my lifelong pal. All of these years he had. Andy had at that time, by that time, his own production company. And I said to him, you like funny westerns? here’s a funny western. So he read it and his partner, his business partner, his producing partner read, and they loved it. They acquired it for a month. They optioned it for just a month. A lot of writers don’t get that a short option is better for the writer than a long one. There’s pressure on the producer to produce. And he was shown around all over Hollywood and nobody bought the script. So after a month, the rights returned to him and he kept the small option. And if that’s all that came of it, no, not such a bad thing, but it’s not all that came of it. He’d also been shown around Hollywood under the best circumstances. not by himself. They wouldn’t have read him. Not by his agent. He didn’t have an agent. But even if you have an agent, it’s not as good as being shown around by a producer with a track record for making hit movies, wants to make new movies. He was right by the heads of all the studios, not by underlings. There’s nothing wrong with being read by underlings. Sometimes you’re better off if you’re starting out working with underlings. But there’s also nothing wrong with being known by all of the, studio heads. And at one studio, Fox, they said, we don’t want to buy that. We don’t want to make this guy’s movie. But we think he has the right voice for a, project that we’ve been having a trouble getting an a list Hollywood writer get a handle on. We’ve been through three. We want to give this guy a shot at it. So suddenly he’s got top representation. He’s writing a picture at Fox. All off of this stupid script. it wasn’t stupid at all. It was just a wonderfully stupid choice. You know, I mentioned before that my father was a musician. He was a bass player. He was very successful primarily in the classical repertoire. The, string bass, not the fender bass, not the rock and roll bass, but, the acoustic stand up bass. And he was primarily in the classical repertoire, but also knew jazz and, and pop, and he made a good living over the years. He was also the head of the base department at juilliard and trained a lot of famous bassists. And you think about what he was doing all of those years, and the answer is, he was dragging horse hair. That’s what the bow is made out of, a cross sheep gut. That’s what the base strings are made out of. it’s Crazy. And somebody said, why are you doing that? He said, well, because it’s going to make a noise, and that noise is going to be so beautiful that people will pay to, to hear it. You’d figure, crank up the lithium on this guy’s drip. He’s Crazy. And the reason that I tell you about it is art is crazy. And writers make themselves crazy by trying to expect it to flow. even the business process and the creative process, logically and rationally and even handedly and fairly. Forget about that. If you can’t stand that, if you can’t take the uncertainty and the frustration, you should do something. Something else. You should do something else. Don’t go into this.

Steve Cuden: That is for sure. It is not a business for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. I’ve said many times, that is right.

Richard Walter: That is quite right.

Steve Cuden: So I’ve been having just so much fun speaking with my old professor, Richard Walter, from a number of years ago when I was at UCLA. And we’ve been talking for just a little more than an hour at this point, and we’re going to wind the show down. I’m just wondering, you’ve told us all these wonderful stories already, and I know you have tons of them, but I’m wondering if you have a story that you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny.

Richard Walter: Well, you know, years and years and years and years and years ago, when I was just barely out of USC Film school. At that time, audiences were very, very young. I remember once a somebody, producers, talking about how a particular movie was going to get not just the youngsters, 16, to 22, but older audiences, 22 to 28. 22 to 28 are older audiences, you understand? But at that time, everybody in the business making movies was an old guy. At that time, just think about it how young movies are. At that time there had been merely, as many years of sound of talkies as there had been silence. And, the studios thought, gee, we got to get some young people in here. And so they set up a program at Universal. They hired a young executive there to meet with young writers and he called the Film schools and Bernie Cantor, whom I referred to earlier, the chairman of the, USC Film school, said they should meet with me. So I went over there and we had a wonderful meeting. And I gave him the first script that I had ever written. I’d written it in the class at SC, and it, was just a splendid, splendid meeting. And, he was going to read the script and get in touch with me. And then after the meeting, as the weeks unfolded, I heard, I, what most writers usually hear in Hollywood, which is the following, you know, just a gaping, yawning silence. It’s, it’s more awful than somebody saying, no, I don’t like this script is the, you know, crickets that you use here. in the interim, though, at that same time, there was a new agent who had just joined an agency which was then called CMA. eventually, I think they’re, today, they’re more like ICM. But it was Cmadda. There was a young agent there who hired, you know, who was signing everybody up at, from the USC Film school. his name was Mike Medavoy. And he would go on to become a very prominent agent and then head of a studio and, created his own studio, Orion. Mike calls me up and sets up a meeting with the same guy at Universal. Not knowing I had already met with the guy. And Mike is kind of intimidating. I didn’t want to tell him what I already met, so I kept the meeting. And I remember when I went into the meeting, he said, haven’t we, haven’t we met? I said, yeah. He said, so what are we doing now? I said, well, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m avoiding what I should be doing, which is I should be home writing. It’s so much easier to come to universal. The legendary Gate guard Scotty waves me in when I show him, when, he checks for my pass, you know, to see that there’s a pass for me. Then I go up to the 10th floor and I’m meeting with you. That sure beats sitting alone by myself in my writing room, you know? And you are here because the studio feels guilty. They should be, you know, hiring young people, but they haven’t given you a shred of power. It’s just a position that you have. And, please don’t take offense at what I’m saying. I said to him, if you read my script, you said you liked it. He had told me he really, really liked the script. We had a good meeting. If I’m wrong, if you have any power, get me a job, you know. So he stood me up, and I thought he was going to walk me to the elevator and get rid of me, which is what I deserve. But instead, he walks me across the aisle, across the corridor to the office of Jennings Lang, an old dinosaur, from the golden age of Hollywood. there’s some scandalous stories about him. I’ll spare you now. But he says, well, this guy says, I have no power. what do we got for him? And he pushes a script to me that’s, on his desk, and he says, have him, look at this and turn this into that. He had a notion about this particular script of the universe. studio owned, and it was actually written by Michael Crichton.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Richard Walter: So here I was, I actually took the script to Archdeli, a delicatessen near universal, and I read the script and had lunch, and I went back without an appointment because I thought I had a handle on what. Who do it. And I could sort of say, you know, where? Da da da da da da da. Well, it should be blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As simple as. As that. As short and quick as that. I went in and, went back to see the guy. He said, well, we don’t. I said, no, I have a. I just need like a, you know, 20 seconds is 10 seconds more than I need. Here’s my answer to the Crichton project. And I said that. So he took me across the hall and, suddenly there, you know, said the same thing to Jennings Lang. And suddenly I’m on staff at universal rewriting Michael Crichton.

Steve Cuden: Wow.

Richard Walter: And with this office with my name on the door, a parking place with my name on it. I know that next to my parking place was Paul Newman’s parking place, but I had nothing to do. They were paying me a great deal of what seemed like in, you know, 19, you know, the early seventies, a great deal of money. But they wouldn’t really respond to my. What I was doing with the rewrite. And so I finished it without really permission to finish it. You know, sometimes writers get fired because they didn’t finish the script. I got fired because I finished the script. I didn’t mind very much because I literally. Mike Medavoy had gotten me a better assignment. but I was bound to universal. He got me a better assignment across the Street, literally, across Barham boulevard at Warner brothers. suddenly I was free to do that because they, they had handed in the script without permission to hand it in. That’s how Crazy Hollywood is. And I’ll tell you one last thing about that. The reason I decided I’m going to finish the script without permission was I was looking out the window. I had nothing to do, and I’m just looking. I didn’t even have to come into the office. You know, they write at home, but there they had an office. Movie stars go to the commissary, walk around the lot, you know, and look at the films that are shooting. I decided, I was just staring out at this wall across the aisle, and I, could see the sun moving very slowly. I could see the shadow. It was the surface of this soundstage. I still remember it was stage twelve had been raked with a fine comb when they had plastered it, and so there were little ridges. And I could suddenly see a shadow of a Street lamp, this soft edge actually moving in and out of those ridges. And I realized I’m watching the shadow move. You know, if I stared at it really, really, really closely, what I’m, actually seeing is the earth turn. And so I got so excited, I ran across the hall. Jackie Cooper, a, former movie star, now not deceased, very nice guy, had an officer who was producing a show that he was going to star. Ran about a series, and he was in a meeting. I said, you got to see this. Come in here. So his whole crew came in, and they look out the window at St. They don’t see anything. So by way of explanation, I said to them, the earth, it’s turning. So they turned and walked out of the office. And I realized, richie, you’re losing it. The hell with the black tower. Just write the script. Finish the script as best you can. These people are looking at you like you’re a maniac. Because you are a maniac.

Steve Cuden: Well, here’s the beauty part. The earth is still turning.

Richard Walter: Yes. That is amazing. despite everything we do to try to stop it.

Steve Cuden: Yes, it’ll keep turning. Even if we’re not here anymore. It’ll keep turning for billions of years more.

Richard Walter: Very useful to bear that in mind.

Steve Cuden: Indeed.

Richard Walter: How much power we have, and more importantly, how much power we don’t have.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. I, love that story Last question for you today. Richard, you’ve given us huge amounts of advice all along the way here, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice or a tip that over the years you’ve developed that you like to give to students more than what you’ve already told us or students or other writers that will help them to get to that next place.

Richard Walter: I do, I have talked for many, many years about Aristotle poetics, which is really the grandfather of screenwriting books. You know, it’s the user’s guide to dramatic narratives. He was analyzing the great greek plays and how. How they worked. and he said something, and it’s, you know, it’s ancient greek and it seems like it’s academic. I, was turned on to it at USC, at the university. But it’s actually a very practical guide. And one thing that Aristotle says is that every screen, every, narrative has a beginning, a middle and an end. And the beginning is the part before which you need nothing. And the end is the part after which you need nothing. Now, when I talk to audiences in classes about that, I like to take a big pause there because I’m waiting for somebody to say, okay, that’s practical, useful advice. My dog knows that, you know, that there’s a beginning, middle and end. There’s nothing before the beginning. But the truth of the matter is, so many movies start before the beginning and they go on after the end. They go on after the point, you know, where you don’t need anything. And it’s very easy to find that you mention it’s not there. I thought Spike Lee’s movie, do the right thing was a really, really good movie. But the end of it, if you remember it, it ends. You know, they decide to trash the guy’s store, and that’s the end of movie. Now, suddenly there’s a panel discussion with, you know, Mookie, that’s Spike and the Danny Aiello character. And I’m expecting Ted Koppel or some moderator to be lowered into the, you know, between moderate it. But here’s my real big piece of advice. beyond that, the writer, which is that not only screenplays and, dramatic narratives have beginnings, middles and ends, but parts of screenplays, scenes, for example, have beginnings and middles and ends. Where is the point in this scene before which you need nothing? Where’s the point after which you need nothing? And finally, even parts of scenes. Parts of parts like lines of dialogue, for example, they have points before which you need nothing, real beginnings. And, they have points after which you need nothing. If you go through your script and you see a character says, look or listen, or I think that’s before the beginning. I’m a longtime member of the writers Guild. There’s an election on, and I’m getting a lot of emails from candidates for the board of directors and so many of them. And these are professional writers. So many of them start with, it’s election time, and, I know everybody’s really busy, so I don’t want to take up any of your time, necessarily. And I’ll get right to the point. Too late to get right to the point. You know, what was all of that stuff before that? You know, the fact of the matter is, er. You know, you don’t need that stuff now. Writers will say to me, yeah, but that’s the way people really talk. Is that the way people really look? It is. So what’s wrong with that? Two things. One is you don’t need to go to the movies. You can go out into the Street and hear the people talk. You don’t need a babysitter. You don’t need to buy a ticket. You don’t need to park. Park the car. You know, a greater sin is the way people really talk is boring. It’s just boring. The way people really talk. Hey. Hi. How you doing? Pretty good. How are you? Oh, I’m glad that he wave is done now. This is so much like. Yeah, remember, September is usually worse than blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that’s our Life. We want our lives to be boring. We want the art to be exciting. And you get that by finding the beginning and the middle of the end. There should be. We were saying at the beginning of our, conference today that there’s just sight and sound. How about make every single sight of and every single sound palpably, measurably move the story forward? You know, one of your classmates, Alexander Payne, became a very famous, very hugely successful writer director. And my favorite movie, of, Alexander’s is about Schmidt. I think it’s the best work that Jack Nicholson ever did. And the beginning of that movie, absolutely nothing happens. It’s just Schmidt sitting in his office in the insurance company, and no sound, no motion, except for the second hand of the clock. The sweep secondhand is ticking off the seconds, and it finally reaches. It’s like 20 seconds to 05:00. It reaches 05:00 and he leaves the office. And you’ve learned so much. Nothing’s happened, but you’ve learned so much about that character and about the situation. You’ve looked around the room, you’ve seen that he’s retiring. The shelves are bare. The walls of the graphics are taken down. It provokes you into thinking that’s all you have to do. It’s extremely easy to understand. Why doesn’t everybody do it because it’s the most difficult thing in the world to do. Why? What’s difficult about it? It takes time. and that’s what the feats, writers who get defeated, they just won’t give it the time. Time is what your life is made up of. And if you want to succeed in the arts, you got to give your Life to it. And if that sounds like a brooding and a cynical and a dark notion, it’s the opposite of that. You know, I’ve lived most of my life. What can be. I know firsthand m what a joy it is to actually traffic in your own imagination, to swap your daydreams for dollars. We get paid. Writers do for what other people get scolded for. And that is daydreaming, that is for sure.

Steve Cuden: And that is such wise advice. And I was always taught at UCLA, no fat on your script. Absolutely no fat of any kind. And that’s more or less what you’re saying is get rid of everything that’s not either moving the story forward or expanding our understanding of the character in some way. And, you know, I think that’s extremely valuable stuff for every writer, whether you’re writing a novel or a screenplay, but in particular screenplays, that is for sure.

Richard Walter: I totally, totally agree. Yes.

Steve Cuden: Yes, Richard, Walter, this has been a great joy for me and so much fun. And I can’t thank you enough for your time, your interest, your energy, and your wisdom.

Richard Walter: Well, thank you. I enjoyed it, too. God bless you for inviting me.

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