[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Paul Chitlik, Author/Screenwriter: You have to understand that you’re writing a document that has to bring a movie into somebody’s head.
Film Courage: What does the word rewrite mean to you?
Paul: Rewrite means this is the process. You have to understand the process of writing a script. No script is perfect the first time out. It always has to be rewritten in some way or another. The way we define rewriting depends on what needs to be done with a script and who we’re writing it for.
If we’re writing it for ourselves and we want to make the best script possible, what we do is we show it to two or three people that we trust, our trusted advisers. We get notes from those people, we get ideas from those people, not from your mother or your best friend or your husband or your wife because they’re going to say whatever they say depending on your relationship with that person. They’re not going to know what kind of notes to give you.
You have to give it to somebody that you know knows how to give notes so when you get those notes you have to think to yourself:
-Is this a note that I can use to make it a better script or I don’t think so?
If you get the same note from two people then you might have to look at it and say:
-Well, maybe I should do something about that.
If you get the same note from three people then you do have to make a change because obviously three people have said:
-There’s an issue here and you need to deal with it…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM/UA’S “The New Twilight Zone,” and staff writer for Showtime’s sitcom “Brothers.” He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, Mainline Releasing, and others. He has directed episodes and been coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.” He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction,” the first network movie shot on digital video for UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel. (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.) Most recently he wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for his work on “The Twilight Zone” and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for “Los Beltrán,” a Telemundo show. He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. He has taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, the University of Barcelona’s film school ESCAC, Cuba’s film school EICTV, Chile’s film school UNIACC, The University of Zulia in Venezuela, The Panamerican University in Mexico City, The Story Academy of Sweden and as a clinical associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Now writing full time again and living near his grandson in Chapel Hill, NC, with wife, Beth McCauley.
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