INTERVIEW: Dale Launer, Part 3

Missed parts 1 and 2 of WU’s interview with screenwriter/producer/director Dale Launer? Click HERE and HERE, then come on back. In the third and final part of our interview, Dale and I talk about screenplay mangling, teaching creativity, the Top Five Tips for aspiring screenwriters, how Dragon Tales inspires him and more. Enjoy!

Part 3: Interview with Dale Launer

Q: How might a screenplay change once it leaves a writer’s hands and moves to the actors and director? Are you ever surprised?

DL: Surprised? Not the right word. Disappointed, yes. Sometimes very disappointed. The screenplay can change if the actor is a big star and wants changes. I’ve never had a big star in any of my movies – at least they weren’t big when they were in my movies. So they weren’t powerful enough to have changes made for them. Personally, I think actors responses to movies can be very valuable – they look at it from the character’s POV – and if they can’t find something to grab onto – you’ve probably made a mistake in the writing. Good writing – well written characters are a thing of joy for an actor. If the writing is strong for them – you’ll find a lot of actors to choose from. Actors will love it, will roll it around, play with it.

Directors often make changes like taking an interior scene indoors to outdoors. Some will make minor changes to the script. I usually hate EVERYTHING they’ve changed, but that’s me. Sometimes I fight them. Sometimes I’m wrong. But I’m usually right. When a director writes a gag or a moment, or changes a scene, and you fight it but don’t win? If it makes it to the screen and you were right – the writer loses because everyone thinks it was they who wrote that dumb joke, that unfunny, silly moment. Sometimes it’s my fault, and I cringe. But when it’s their fault? Awful. Blind Date was a movie I pitched, set up, wrote a number of drafts. It got me other jobs even and was being passed around as an example of comedy writing. But the studio had two big stars attached who got director approval – Sean Penn and Madonna. They got the director booted off the project. And now no one wanted to direct it all of a sudden. The studio had it re-written. Then Blake Edwards – who ended up directing it – re-wrote that movie. It was pretty bad. I tried to get my name taken off, but I couldn’t. (There’s a rule, yah see, if you’ve been paid X amount or more, the studio has the right on whether or not you are granted a pseudonymous credit. I was paid X and they said no.) It was a whole new utterly silly script based on my premise.

Q: What are your favorite craft books and novels?

DL: Craft books? You mean writing books? Novels – I used to read novels, but once I started writing professionally – I almost exclusively read non-fiction. I see movies, but I rarely read novels. I might change that soon, I’d just rather be writing than reading. I love to write first drafts. I don’t mind re-writing for myself (but have a hard time stopping). I usually (but not always) loathe re-writing my scripts for other people. But it’s not always a nightmare.

Q: I did mean writing books. Did you use anything when learning your craft that you thought of as biblical?

DL: No. I find most of the books that try to teach how to craft a screenplay are written by people who can’t write. They look at a script after it has been made into a movie, and then they deconstruct it and label the parts. It’s not very helpful and in fact can lead you to believe that if you’ve covered all those bases – you will have a good script. You won’t. They don’t teach how to be creative, how to be fresh, or innovative.

Those books are probably good in teaching you how to look at your script after the fact and analyze it. Maybe.

Q: Do you think anyone or anything can teach this kind of creativity, or do you think it’s all about sitting for a deep think?

DL: I think it’s possible, yes. But I don’t see anyone doing it. I don’t see anyone doing it in a class. A really good teacher who is creative gets it, and can probably teach it.

I’ve toyed with teaching a class in creative writing with a heavy emphasis on the creative. It would be a lot of work, but it would be fun taking people who weren’t creative and opening them up. Trust me – if you told me 40 years ago that I would have a career in “creative writing” – I probably would’ve fainted in fear. The idea of creative writing thoroughly intimidated me. Which is why Take the Money and Run – which I thought was largely silly – was inspirational. Not that I thought it was good, I didn’t, but I thought I could pull that off.

Q: Were there mentors or scripts you turned to as you were evolving as a writer?

DL: No mentors, not. I read two scripts – The Natural and Altered States. Well, that’s not true, I did read a few TV scripts – not many all the way through. My father did some acting, largely a character actor in bit parts. As a kid I would sometimes read scenes with him to help him memorize his lines.

Now that I think about it – I had a great teacher in the 3rd grade. He would draw stuff up on the blackboard like a cartoonist. He has a silly kids sense of humor. He was adored by all And we had such fun learning – and learned a lot. We’d write musicals, write songs, sing and perform musicals. I was a singing T. Rex in one. He understood that playing can be productive.

He was taken out of the city school system (Los Angeles) and put in an experimental school at UCLA and studied. Yep, he was great, but they could never figure out how to bottle it and teach it to other teachers.

He later pursued a career as an artist – making whimsical drawings of dragons – watercolors which was turned into a hit TV series for kids called Dragon Tales. Check him out. Ron Rodecker. We’re still friends today.

Q: How about favorite movies? Dramas, comedies and of course Woody Allen. And what underrated film do you think is a hidden classic and why?

DL: The hidden classic is King Rat – which works on a number of levels. If Paul Newman had not dropped out, I think it would show up on more Top Ten lists.

FAVORITE DRAMAS: King Rat, The Godfather, French Connection, Jaws, Psycho, Goodfellas, Sunset Blvd., To Kill A Mockingbird, Coolhand Luke, Amadeus, East of Eden, Casablanca, The African Queen, Casablanca, North by Northwest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, All the President’s Men, Taxi Driver, Fatal Attraction, Rear Window, Out of Sight, Touch of Evil, Witness, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Conformist…

And I’m sure I’m missing a few.

COMEDIES (some of these are “dramadies”): Fargo, Dr. Stranglove, The Graduate, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Network, Mash, The Sting, Tootsie, Risky Business, Broadcast News, Trainspotting, South Park the Movie, Shampoo and Annie Hall.

I could probably make up another list of “classics” by which I mean older films. I don’t think they hold up, but I do like them and they did have influence over films in general, and myself.

Q: What about King Rat do you love? What works?

DL: It works on a number of levels. It’s an allegory about power systems. It’s also a typically British movie in that it deals with the same thing British movies always deal with – classes. I also likes how it plays Brits vs US. The whole breakdown of order in desperate times.

Q: If you could pass your “Top Five Tips for Aspiring Screenwriters” on to the public, what would they be?

DL: Isn’t that on the website? I’ll give it a try.

1. Check it with the truth. That should be your guide. It will make it smart, and it can make it funnier. You can’t be too honest.

2. Write everyday – that way you keep the flow up.

3. Try to write fast – just get the ideas down on the page – that keeps the flow up, and the creative gates open.

4. Be entertaining. Imagine you were a reader who gets to slog through one crappy screenplay after another everyday for weeks on end. Let your script be one that breaks that monotony. Give them a treat. Keep it going on every page. Avoid “filler” where you’re just giving out information.

5. Listen to the voice. When that little voice inside says “NO” to a creative idea because it’s gone too far – check it again, try to talk yourself into it. When the voice says “bad” – trust it, change it. When the voice says “something’s missing” find it, fix it.

Thank you, Dale Launer for a fascinating interview, and best of luck with your upcoming works!