[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Beyond the Hero, The Big Idea is the relationship is the movie.
Can you tell us more about this?
Michael Weiss, Author/Screenwriter/Professor:
I wouldn’t say that the relationship is the movie, but the book that I wrote is called Beyond the Hero.
The subtitle is Relationship Driven Screenwriting and The Secret to Hollywood’s Greatest Scripts.
When I talk about this, just to put it in perspective, I’m really talking about mostly mainstream, Western-style, movie making.
For me, mostly in the past 30 years let’s say and those we’ve talked about, those are the examples that I use.
It’s when I started as a screenwriter this was not something that anyone talked about.
I certainly didn’t know it.
Then when I started teaching and breaking down movies to go over them with my students,
What made this one good?
What are we looking at?
I just started to see this pattern, certainly in the Academy Award-winning movies.
When I looked at the best movies every year like the most successful movies or the ones that I wanted to teach and in some movies it’s obvious like I’ll study The King’s Speech in class.
It’s obvious that that’s a relationship-driven movie.
It’s the king and his speech therapist, right?
Some movies it’s not so obvious.
The idea behind the book is that not only are relationships important in movies, but that if you’re a screenwriter when you go to start a film, I’m saying the most important thing or the essential thing that you need to figure out, what’s the core relationship.
It’s the difference between The Hero’s Journey.
The book is called Beyond the Hero.
What you’ll read in most books, you’ll study in classes, you’ll see in lectures and articles, is that singular hero’s journey, a lead character called a protagonist, a hero goes on a quest, has some kind of goal…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Michael Weiss is a Writers Guild of America screenwriter with an extensive career selling original material and writing on assignment for a wide range of Hollywood studios. He has over a dozen produced films to his credit, including the big-budget feature Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brendan Fraser and sequels to studio franchises like The Scorpion King, Jarhead and The Butterfly Effect.
His world-building portfolio includes writing for a theme park in China and an action-adventure video game. A long-time instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, he is the recipient of the Distinguished Instructor award and a contributing writer to the screenwriting guide Cut to the Chase: Writing Feature Films with the Pros at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. He currently teaches writing at Chapman University Dodge College of Film & Media Arts.
BUY THE BOOK – BEYOND THE HERO: Relationship-Driven Screenwriting and the Secret to Hollywood’s Greatest Scripts
MORE VIDEOS WITH MICHAEL WEISS
https://tinyurl.com/mwuhwudu
CONNECT WITH MICHAEL WEISS
Michaeldweiss.com
IMDB
Instagram
Youtube.com/@GoBeyondTheHero
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
