Interview
Writer/Director Gary Ross
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AW: Did you sell Pleasantville as a pitched idea before you began the outline?
GR: Uh-huh.
AW: You tend to then approach story from structure, or do you have a really solid idea of your main character as you're beginning to do the structure?
GR: Great question. Meaning, do I let the character inform the outlining process?
AW: What's your inroad, in other words? Are you coming from structure or from character?
GR: Never, ever, ever, ever, character.
AW: Really?
GR: Yeah. I'll tell you why. You will chase something that really should be an instrument of you. Never structure either; theme, point of view, my artistic point of view, what I want to say, what I want to express. Characters are your servants. More bad writing occurs in the name of being character-based, because people chase people that don't exist -- as if there's some character out there that actually exists that can tell them what the story should be. But that's just an extension of your own imagination. But we delude ourselves into believing that there's a person out there that somehow exists and if only the character will tell me what to do. The character doesn't exist - the character's an instrument of your will, and expressing what you want to express, and can be altered and modified to more clearly express what you want to express. You've got to get clear on your own point of view, not your character's. And what frequently happens is with young writers is they will end up writing very confessionally or autobiographically in the name of one protagonist, who ends up usually being tremendously passive and neutral, as opposed to the other characters in the piece, because it ends up being them, and ultimately voyeuristic and detached from the action, and not a central actor in it because they're so close to the character that the writer's voice becomes the protagonist's voice, and there's no distance, and there always needs to become distance.
AW: Did this approach to writing grow out of a particular school of writing thought or philosophy, I mean, did you read Lajos Egri, or did you read Syd Field?
GR: Lajos Egri -- those are terrible. I think they're truly terrible. I read Aristotle, and Poetics, which is I think the best primer on screenwriting. Shaw's The Quintessence of Ibsenism is a really good piece of criticism about writing. The problem I have with Egri, and with -- they're not terrible -- Syd Field, and all that stuff, is that they become very, very formulaic, and that yes, all those things exist in a screenplay that they're talking about, but you end up with a whole generation of writers that are trying to work backwards from a paradigm of what should be in the screenplay, when all those things will occur organically if you spring from what you want to say. If I spring from what I want to say, I will end up with characters in opposition to one another that produce an inciting incident, that inciting incident will produce complications, those complications will reveal the core question of the piece, which will create a third act climax, which will demand resolution, which will create the end of your story. All those things will happen organically, if I have a rich enough, fertile enough question that can bloom.
AW: Then you're still aware of act transitions and beats that inform the structure along the way as well, or does that, like you said, grow organically out of how you start?
GR: Act transitions...yeah. I've done structured movies with five acts -- Big had five acts. Pleasantville has three. Dave had four. But I don't worry about it. That happens organically. People who worry about this act structure sort of thing, instead of what they say or do, or what the characters organically want to do, just mess themselves up. It's so much more important to understand why structure is present, and what it's for, than it is to work backwards from it. How many of these writers worry why there should be a third act? Why should there be a third act?
AW: That's a very good point. (laughs)
GR: Or why there is a division between a beginning and a middle. What is a middle? Why is there a middle, and why is that different than a beginning?
AW: And then, according to you; how does that relate to what you're trying to say?
GR: Exactly. So, to me...Aristotle said that there are two kinds of plots: the Simple and the Complex. The simple is one -- now this is an oversimplification, but -- the Simple is one in which the core question of the piece is asked at the outset, and answered at the end. The Complex plot being where the conflict of the forces at the outset produce a third thing -- which is the core question of the piece -- in the middle, and that's answered at the end. And that's really what a rich middle is about...and a complex plot. And if you've asked a rich enough question it'll bloom out of the middle of the movie. And that's what creates the satisfaction. And it requires enough conflict and evolution for the push of the bloom because it's a complex enough question to demand an answer. That's why a middle, not what a middle.
AW: (laughs)
GR: Right?
AW: That's a great point.
GR: Okay. And that question compounds and intensifies until it demands resolution. That's a third act conflict -- climax. That's why a climax, not what a climax. Right?
AW: It's a different approach. Yeah.
GR: Now if I just work backwards and I need a third act climax, I need a middle, I need to get out of my first act and into my second act and have a complication, I need conflict -- all those elements will be disassociated from one another, not organically springing from one another.
AW: I absolutely -- that's a crystal clear metaphor, I really like that a lot -- (the dramatic question) blooming out of the second act. It makes a lot of sense. How did you sell your first screenplay?
GR: I never sold a screenplay, I got hired to write one. I was novelist, and I was not making much money, and then I...got a job writing a screenplay for, like, more money than I was making on the -- or a treatment, for more money than I was making on the entire novel. So I did that, and I got a job writing the screenplay, and I never went back to writing books. Then I did a couple of ideas that were other people's ideas, then I said, well, if I'm just going to be a screenwriter and not a novelist then I should do something I love. And that's when Big happened. And then I had this idea and I shared it with Anne, and we decided to do it together.