Judges are tally the scores - stay tuned for the 2010 quarterfinalist announcement early next week.

This year’s fall retreat will be held from September 25th to September 28th in the glorious mountain town of Idyllwild, California. For four days, twenty one aspiring screenwriters will meet and mingle with over a dozen Hollywood professionals for one-on-one mentoring sessions as well as over 20hrs of small group sessions, filmmaker presented screenings, meals and other events.

Ever wanted a peek inside the CineStory Retreat? Well now you can see what the CineStory experience is all about from the comfort of your own home.

Check out our YouTube Channel: CineStory TV

We hate to get all touchy-feely here at CineStory (okay, that’s a total lie), but the warmth and deep emotion in the room at the closing session of the retreat were nothing short of amazing.  First, the mentors each spoke about what the time meant for them.

Jonathan Fernandez felt that he learned as much as anybody up here, like it’s made him a better writer.  This is the most unbelievable education on screenwriting you will get anywhere.

Lisa Callamaro noted that she and the other mentors get beaten down by the day to day, and to come up here for this pure experience, just talking about story, plot, character, it’s rejuvenating.  It’s a way to remember, “That’s why we’re doing this, that’s why we love movies.”

Michael Salort has spent so much time in his writing career learning about financing and business that it’s easy for him to forget that it’s all about the writing, so for him, it’s kind of frightening to come up here and be with all the writers and remember what it’s all about.

Nana Greenwald has ADD when in LA.  For her, it was amazing to spend such focused, deep, collaborative time just concentrating on story, which she doesn’t get to do very often.

Joe Forte appreciated the environment of openness that everyone brought.  The mentors worry about how people are going to react, but the time spent in the beginning of the retreat (the pre-session) working to manage expectations seems to have paid off, and he appreciates everyone’s spirit of creating that space so we all can learn.

Mark Fergus said, “What they said.”  Then he added that whatever the mentors were putting out, they were totally getting back.  He talked about keeping the dreams alive while treading the really practical path of mastering story.  A writing career is hard but it’s not just some crazy dream, there is a brick by brick approach, it’s entirely possible if you are ready to work hard enough — it’s not just being hit by lightning.

Meg LeFauve commented that the mentors had asked the writers to stay open, lean into sharp points, be brave, be open — and they all did it.  There was amazing energy, openness, moments of true bravery and heroism — she personally smoked a few brains — but the writers hung in down that road.  For her, this was also one of the most open years in terms of people jumping in to pitch.  She was impressed by the chutzpah.  She comes here to teach, and she felt that this year she learned also, both in terms of how to teach and in terms of her own writing.

Michelle Sy said that CineStory is a really special thing.  Initially it was a way to give back, but she gets so much out of it and it’s a way of being a better producer.  It’s easy to forget all the good parts, this is a great reminder.

Amy Salko-Robertson then put in, “Ditto.”  To her, this was the best year of CineStory in that expectations were in the right place, allowing everyone to have good discourse in terms of “going there.”  She was blown away by everyone’s braveness.  Each writer might not have had exactly the right answer in every session, but hopefully, it’s given everyone a road to keep on thinking about their projects.  There’s something liberating about CineStory, it’s such a unique program, and liberating for a city girl like her, too, to let down her hair and enjoy all this nature.

Regina Lee came here to learn from the writers and her fellow mentors.  It was a great novelty to her to have everyone bringing a different perspective — studio notes are a more singular voice, but here, mentors have completely different viewpoints, something you don’t typically get a chance to hear.

Barri Evins came for the food.  (Our wonderful Aroma Café!)  She’s been to CineStory second only in amount of times to Meg, and she’s so excited to see it grow.  This has been an extraordinary year in growth, innovation, re-thinking it in terms of making it bigger and better.  She really pushes people to get to their gut, to get to what they wanted to say and what was the most important thing to say, what was the story’s most ultimate potential.  For her, it’s sheer joy to talk story — much of her day is spent pushing a giant, jagged boulder uphill, and to spend a few days only focusing on story, makes her walk on air.  Then she sees how incredibly smart the other mentors are and how much she’s going to learn, and she’s humbled.

Phil Eisner, being a really selfish person, wishes he was up here to give back, but he gets so much out of . . . stealing your ideas . . . did you register that, Nino? . . .  As a working writer, the process is great for him, giving other people notes — it gives him a window on his own work.  At the point he’s at in his career, it may be easier to get in the room, but he still goes through the same process with his own scripts, he still can learn to make them better, so he comes back from others’ scripts to see own with a critical eye.  When a movie gets made, there is a certain moment where this is the perfect draft, as good as the story will ever be — that is the most satisfying moment.  Then come casting decisions and other practical considerations that change the draft and it will never be perfect again.  It’s brutal to make films, the joy of coming up here is to look at the absolute best version of that film.

Then Amy puts that we are also here to honor Pam Pierce, who gives so ridiculously wholly of herself.  The mentors love Pam, and it’s really her who’s giving the gift.

Then a bunch of the writers spoke up, and things got really mushy.

Meg wrapped up by stating that it’s her goal for each of the writers not to go down the mountain unless they are inspired, and anyone who doesn’t feel that way should come talk to her to let her know what didn’t work, what can be made better.  (She also took the opportunity to plug Screenwriting Summer Camp, which, she says, is the “grad school” of CineStory, where you actually write your script with development help from a mentor.)

Pam closes by mentioning the staff, who read scripts, gave notes, baked scones, helped with accommodations, scheduled rides, schlepped cases of water, and, in Clea’s case, “saved her life” — that would be Clea, Willie, Lisanne, Kevin, Chandus (who had to go back to his day job), Melissa, Ivan (who doubled as our hard working Aroma Café guy), and myself, your intrepid blogger.

Barri Evins begins the next informal by quoting “the great Val Kilmer,” as he quoted George Lucas (and I am not quoting directly here):  A movie is a success or failure from the minute we solidify the concept.  Execution is only 50%.  (As translated by Kilmer, “If you don’t want to see Arnold Schwartzenegger pregnant, you ain’t gonna go to the movie.”)

Ideas are the lifeblood of Hollywood, and you must have an idea file, literally, in your computer, in your brain — you must be constantly noticing things and noting them for ideas and stuffing them into your idea file — you don’t have to figure it out now, just tuck it away for later.

Amy interjects here to point out that this is the key to your life.  Pay attention.  (Barri is now about to vomit because here she is, condensing her entire three-day development seminar into the next hour-and-a-half, and Amy is calling it the key to your life.  Will it live up to the hype?)

If you want to make a living selling spec scripts, you are a gambler.  You gamble huge chunks of your time on ideas that you hope you can sell and make enough money to live.  So here are Barri’s three tests of whether your idea is marketable, and how to choose your next idea to write.

The first litmus test:  Is it a puppet show?  Making movies is the most expensive way ever invented to tell stories — there are many, many other ways to tell stories.  It could be a poem, it could be a novel.  So how do you know?

1.  Does it have a hero we can root for, trying to achieve a tangible goal — love, success, getting the girl, saving the world — despite obstacles (conflict) that get in the hero’s way.  If it doesn’t have that, it might be a puppet show.

Does it have conflict, is it cool, does it have a clever twist, is it unique or surprising in some way, something that intrigues, is it visceral — will it make you want to scream out at the screen (”don’t do it!”), well up, laugh out loud, etc.  Are you burning to tell this story?  Is it not what you know but what you know deeply and emotionally?

2.  Is there an audience?  Find out, pitch it to everyone you know or meet.  (Not just your friends and family.  Pitch it to strangers — if you can hold a stranger’s attention for a couple of minutes, you’ve got a movie).

3.  Is it pitchable?  Especially when you are selling your spec script, it will help you if it’s pitchable (rather than execution dependent).

[Amy jumps in here to say that the mentors are not saying not to write that little personal film.  We’re talking here about how to pick the script that is going to advance your career in an ever-shrinking market.  This is the reality of the game.  Get in the game first, and then you can write your own ticket.]

Finally, know your strengths.  Don’t write crap just because you think you can sell it.  Development execs can tell immediately if you wrote it just to sell it, if your heart isn’t in it.  They know when you’re trying to shove yourself into a box in order to be commercial.

Next:  Your ideas are precious.  They are yours.  You love them like children.  You need to find a way to distance yourself so you can evaluate your ideas in a bigger world.  Fortunately, Barri has a system.  And I was going to share it with you here . . . but I think some things ought to be saved for your actual retreat experience . . . when you come to CineStory.

I have just walked in on the morning’s informal — just had to have that extra hour of sleep this morning, so sue me — and I am hearing Philip Eisner talking about what a writing career is.  You are writing for the purpose of a movie being made, you are not working only for yourself, you do not have control — unless you are writing, shooting, starring, doing it entirely yourself — even if you’re Robert Rodriguez and working with a skeletal crew — you have to realize that you are talking about an endeavor that involves 50 people, marketing, enormous sums of money.  If you want a career as a writer, you are going to be a prostitute.  It’s up to you to decide what kind of prostitute.  You can be a hooker.  You can be a high class call girl, decide what you’ll do, and what you won’t do.  Phil, himself, will do most things.  Then there are other things that he will do — but they’re extra.  (I’m not doing it justice, but you get the idea.)

Phil is a writer who is welcome on the set, because he will sit down and do a re-write on the set, the best re-write he can possibly do.  In one case, the studio wanted a new ending.  He tried and he tried and he tried, but he got to a point where he was out of ideas, he just couldn’t give them what they wanted.  He told them so, he said they would have to get someone else.  He was heartbroken, but he couldn’t do anything else.  The exec called his agent, Lisa Callamaro, they felt they were in an awkward position.  She talked it over with him, he told her he just didn’t have anything, and she gave them the okay to get another writer.  Phil was ready to pack up and go home (he was on location in London), but the producers said no, they wanted him to say, and his wife joined him and they stayed for the rest of the shoot.  He preserved his relationship with the producers and, more importantly, he preserved his credit on the film.  All in illustration of the point that it pays not to be a diva, not to throw a hissy fit when things aren’t going the way you want them to.

Clea has just called an end to the session, and I — who came in late, as noted above — am realizing that the theme of this session has been that screenwriting is not about sitting in your room and writing and writing and writing.  Screenplays are blueprints of movies, and we are all in screenwriting to see our movies made.  As Lisa just said, there are lots of working writers who never see their work on the screen.  They may be making a living, but they are sad.  We are in the business to make movies.

Now we get to the heart of the matter — the one-on-one meetings.

As this is my first year as staff at a CineStory retreat, this is my first time being on this side of the table — I was assigned three scripts to read, and now it is my job to give these writers notes.

I was just a little panicked.  I mean, you work and you work and you work on learning to be in a meeting and listen to notes with equanimity — Meg, Sheila and Joe spent more than two hours on this issue alone on Saturday — how not to be defensive.  But when you’re on the other side of the table, you have to worry about not being offensive!  (Well, studio execs don’t have to worry about that, but we here at CineStory pride ourselves on having compassion for the poor writer.)

So what if I really hate a script?

I sought guidance from some of CineStory’s mentors, and I searched my soul.  Is it just not my cup of tea?  Is it a genre that doesn’t interest me?  Is it a story that offends me personally?  Is it a structural problem?  Or is there truly no story there?

It turns out these are all legitimate issues to address in the meeting.  My job is to help the writer find the story he or she wants to tell.  So if I hate a script, the first question for me to ask a writer is, “What is the story you are telling here?”  It might turn out that the writer is seeing a totally different story from what I am seeing on the page.  In that case, it will be my job to help the writer actually tell the story intended.  (That is what I am hoping for.)

On the other hand, what if it’s the worst case scenario?  What if the writer really wanted to write this the way it came out?  And I think it’s just plain bad?  Then, my job will be to move on to, “What else have you got?  What’s your next story?”

This is very much against my instinct.  My gut desperately wants to shake someone and say, “What were you thinking???”  My writerly mind desperately wants to say, “Okay, if this is really what you want to write — here’s the way I would do it.”  (In all fairness, the writer could take this entire screenplay and do it in the first 20 pages, and then go on to tell a different story entirely.  Which, if I received this job as an assignment, is how I would handle it.)  BUT THAT’S NOT MY JOB.

Luckily, I got to warm up today with a project I really did like.  The story had some big structural problems, so I started out by asking the writer to identify for me the spine — the inciting incident, the plot points, etc.  The structural issues immediately became clear to the writer, and suddenly, we were spitballing ideas back and forth and the writer was re-structuring the script on the spot.  That was exciting.

So now I know I can be in a meeting on this side of the table.  And I will practice Zen coverage for the rest of the week.

The next installment of the Clip Show began with Pam’s special guest Jim Robinson, a writer/filmmaker/new media consultant, who presented us with the opening of Fight Club.  Jim’s two criteria for a good movie are (a) does he want to see it again, and (b) is he mad he didn’t write it himself?  The opening sequence of Fight Club piles so much info on so fast, and does it with excellent production and sound design.

Lisa Callamaro followed with The Verdict, where we see Paul Newman as the broken down, ambulance-chasing lawyer.  The very first shot tells you so much about the character — it’s the middle of the day and he’s playing pinball and drinking.  Then we see the money come out and we see him hustling for work at funerals.  So you know right now that this character is dead inside, and this movie is about selling things.  Also, the opening shots are filled with imagery evoking the Catholic church — which is going to turn out to be the antagonist of the story.

Jonathan Fernandez shares the opening scene from Animal House, in which we are immediately introduced to Larry, the character that we will most relate to, who does not fit in to either of the fraternities — but he will be our eye into the wacky world of this movie.

Part 3 of the Clip Show picked up after the new media panel discussion.

Barri Evins brought in Three Days of the Condor, which she tells us is directly related to North by Northwest and The Bourne Identity — all three have the same story dna.  Within the first seven minutes of the movie, we find out so many character traits about Robert Redford’s character — he’s quick, he’s funny, he’s nerdy, he’s really smart — and he trusts.  The movie is about who we can trust.

Mark Fergus brings a classic into the conversation with The Searchers.  John Wayne’s character is extremely complex — he’s closed and bottled up, he’s full of rage, he’s racist — yet he’s this family’s protector.  If you look closely at John Ford’s filmmaking, you see how Wayne is constantly, visually separated from the family.

Nana Greenwald, it turns out, has stolen Amy Salko-Robertson’s perennial choice, Harold and Maude, so she announces that the two of them are sharing.  Amy pipes up that Harold and Maude is such a great film that no matter what Pam’s clip assignment is, Harold and Maude is always her best choice.  In this case, I have to agree — Harold and Maude has one of the best openings of any movie ever, IMHO.  There in the opening, we have the whole story — Harold is rich, he has everything, but he’s morbid and depressed, and for all the things he has, his life is empty, something we see right away in his lack of relationship with his mother.  Harold is the anti-theme of the movie, where as Maude, an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor who has nothing, is full of life and love, she is the theme.  Harold learns from Maude how to love life.

In addition to the Clip Show, Pam covered a lot of territory today.

We got to meet a young screenwriting scholarship winner at Idyllwild Arts who gets to take part in the retreat and work with mentors.  We were introduced to Liz Alani, who runs the Final Draft Big Break competition, and she, in turn, introduced us to Jordan and Terry, two of the Big Break winners.

Clea Frost was introduced as CineStory’s new executive director.  Amazingly, Clea came to CineStory for the first time last year, as a finalist.  And now look at her!  But she sure remembers what it’s like to be a newbie, and how challenging the retreat can be.

Lisa Callamaro, chair of CineStory’s board of directors, introduces the CineStory Screenwriting Awards Grand Prize Winner, Nino del Pesco, and without much ceremony, hands him AN ENVELOPE.  (We all know what that means.)

Pam then talked about the CineStory community, and how people come to us looking for writers and material.  By way of illustration, she introduced Stephanie Green, a former screenwriting student of hers, who is now a director.  As a baby director who has hooked up with a hot producer, Steph is actively looking for a screenplay for her first feature.  She gave us some great advice:  go to short film festivals, research the up and coming directors who are appearing in them.  These new directors are all looking for material to make their first feature.  It’s another avenue to pursue in your career.

Then there were more clips — which deserve a posting all their own — and we moved across the way to the dining hall for dinner.

What then transpired for me personally was the high-tech Lucy & Ricky show, as I tried to connect up with my honey via e-mail from my computer to his BlackBerry, or stalking around the dining hall, and in widening circles outside, searching for bars on my cell phone.  (I finally found him, but not before I stood out in the middle of the street semaphoring my arms at his oncoming xenon headlights.)

After dinner, a fascinating panel discussion about new media . . . which deserves a post all its own.  Later.

The Clip Show — ’08 Edition — Part 1

This year’s assignment for the Clip Show was opening scenes that powerfully introduce main characters.

Meg LeFauve starts the ball rolling with the opening of Erin Brockavich, in which Erin is interviewing for a job in a medical office for which she has no training or experience.  Meg’s response to this year’s assignment is that it’s a craft question.  The writer has packed a whole lot of information into that opening speech.  We immediately learn her entire past, that she’s someone who is judged but fights for what’s right and what she believes in.  This could have been an issue movie, in which case it would have been a complete snooze.  Instead, it is about who she is, and the specificity of her character is established on the first page of the script.  Meg cautions us not to confuse situation with character.  The situation may inform and test the character, but each specific character reacts differently to the situation.  Don’t rely on situation to create character.

Joe Forte brings us the opening of Raging Bull, reminding us that originally the film opened with LaMotta in the ring, in his prime, but that version of the film didn’t work.  Then they got the idea to start it at the end — with the aging LaMotta practicing his silly presentation — which immediately pulls us into the movie.  How did this guy end up in this situation?  Then the film goes back in time and we are sucked in.

Philip Eisner shows the opening of The Exorcist, which does not follow the main character but a secondary character.  The long opening sequence on the archeological dig shows us a lot of ominous images that pay off later in the film.  He also talks about how long this film takes to get to the horror part.  It goes through all the scientific reasons possible why this girl is the way she is, and it’s a long time before you get to the vomit scene.  He says in the horror genre world, there’s a lot of pressure to get to the goo, but you want to hold off as long as possible.

Michelle Sy’s pick is the opening of The Bourne Identity.  Bourne is found floating in the ocean, bullets in his back, he doesn’t know who he is.  Immediately, the who, what, when why and how of the entire film are set up.

Regina Lee shares with us the opening of American Pie as an example of a perfectly structured film with a great opening that sets up not only the main character but also the character of the father, who is going to be very important also.  She talks about comedy as a genre, and knowing how to pitch it.  Execs want to know not only what the concept is, but whether they want to work with you, the craftsman.

This year, the clips were divided up into several parts over the course of the days.  I’ll be back with another installment later.