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Kario Salem: Top of the Pack
by Alia Yunis
(December 1998) |
Characters are everything. Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Kario Salem brought home this point several times during his talk at the Scriptwriters Network meeting on December 12.
"Even a so-called action script fails unless the characters are the ones driving the action," he said, in explaining that he finds the term "character-driven script" redundant. Citing Armageddon, he said that scripts that are not propelled by strong characters ( and often have a lot of writers) are not really films as much as they are projects.
So what makes an intriguing character? "People want to see an extraordinary person, not an ordinary person. Three-fourths of your work is compelling the reader to follow the evolution of this extraordinary character," he stated.
Listen to your characters for that evolution. "If you know who your characters are, they will tell you an interesting story," he advised. Within your character is the conflict, and you need to give him or her a good premise to inhabit. "Life is messy. Mess it up for your character," he said.
He warned that it is crucial to make the script itself an interesting read. "Find the tone of the drama and then write it that way," he said.
There's no doubt Salem knows character, as reflected in the complex and disturbing portrayal of the title character in Don King: Only in America, for which he won an Emmy this year.
"I thought I had a chance of winning, I wanted to win, and if I didn't win, I was going to be pissed," he laughed, when asked what it felt like to be at the Emmy ceremony. However, Salem does not dismiss the significance of his award. "It's something no one can take away. You are so honored by it. The moment you win, all that ambition dissolves into humility. It's an exceptional experience," he said.
He gave the award to his parents for a couple of weeks, he said, because he felt it helped make up for "the hell they went through" since he began his career in Hollywood.
Trained at Julliard, Salem came to Hollywood several years ago to be an actor and songwriter. He actually made a living as an actor. But not a great living. At the insistence of his friends and a threat from his girlfriend, he sat down and wrote a script. "I became a writer out of desperation," he said. "That's a good reason to start, but it's not a good reason to continue." He took a year to write that first script before sending it out. Someone got it to producer Josh Brand, who in turn bought a pitch from Salem. Called "The Winner's Circle," it is about "being too immature for the relationship of your life." The completed script was purchased by producer Arnold Kopelson.
Obviously, it was not only his friends' faith in him that made Salem an exceptional writer. "I had the discipline from being a songwriter," he explained. "I also had read thousands of scripts and plays as an actor." Actors know good dialogue and good writing, he emphasized, encouraging everyone in the audience to take an acting class to improve their writing.
While many writers scramble to find a way into the business to get their writing through the Hollywood maze, Salem considers the writing itself as the best way into the business. "It is hard as hell, second to none in the cinematic disciplines. However, it is anonymous and speaks for itself," he said.
Along with Don King: Only America, Salem has written two other scripts based on real characters, HBO's The Rat Pack and a script called Memphis, about Martin Luther King, for Oliver Stone. He believes that "real life characters" are the hardest to write because truth and narrative are often very much at odds. Perhaps that is why actual subjects don't tell you the whole truth and often try to shape their own narratives, revising their own history to conceal and flatter. He said you have to decipher these voices. "It's a book report if you don't take poetic license," he insisted. "You might not agree with the point-of-view in JFK, but there's no denying it is an excellent film. History is linear, and movies are not."
Salem said he is very confident in his work because he doesn't just write - he researches extensively, spending hours at the library and interviewing those who lived through the events in the story. "First there's talent, either you have it or not. Other than that, research is everything. I read everything I can to get an image for the story. You are the director when you write a script, and there has to be an image that inspires you," he said. That image becomes your point-of-view alone. For example, he spent hours talking with Coretta Scott King for the Martin Luther King script, although he ultimately used his own interpretation of events, an interpretation he says she may not agree with.
Whether writing a true story or an original concept, Salem advises to "never write too soon." He spent an entire year researching the Memphis and another year writing it. He believes you should know everything you possibly can about your main characters so you will know what they will do in any situation.
Learn to empathize with every character, even those you don't like, he added, because the audience has to empathize with them at some level for them to have any validity.
This is similar to the training an actor does before playing a character. "When you are a writer, you get to play all the characters," he said, explaining why he doesn't miss acting at all.
He added that every scene should work on "ten levels, not just two." He reminded us that you can't get there unless you understand everything your character needs.
Each scene is a story in of itself, with a beginning, middle, and end. Your theme and conflict must be worthy, or the script will "collapse from a lack of weight," he said. He cited Primary Colors as a film that largely failed because it didn't have a strong central conflict.
Salem said he hasn't had to do much pitching lately, but he advised those that do to love what they're pitching and think of it as a performance. "You want to get it done in about 10 to 15 minutes. Say to yourself that you don't need to have all the answers. It takes the onus off the notion of a perfect pitch," he said.
Studio executives will have their own questions, and they may be annoying questions that shouldn't reflect on an individual executive. "Studio executives are smart people who sometimes have stupid agendas," he said. He recalled that when he and Josh Brand pitched a television series to a studio, they were turned down because it wasn't formulaic enough. They couldn't explain where the show would be in five years, and the studio executives needed a guarantee to green light it. "Studios underestimate audiences," he lamented.
When you do get a sale or assignment, he recommends you honor the people you are working with. "If you write really well and accommodate them to a certain point, they will keep you on the project," he said. He voices his concerns tactfully, he said, and has been lucky to never have been rewritten, although he expects it will happen one day and that scares him.
However, we can't act like "Van Gogh" about criticism. A writer who "just slaps paint on a canvas and cuts off his ear and expects people to call his script a masterpiece" is in big trouble. "That doesn't mean you should take it all to heart or you will go insane. Look for the common thread in the criticism. There usually is one, and it can be enormously valuable," he suggested.
He said that the more he writes, the more confidence he has in his writing. "I know when something is working and when it's not. Turning a script in before it's ready is a big mistake," he warned.
He has, however, had some painful moments. "When you have to make cuts because you have written a $15 million movie for a $8.9 million budget - that hurts," he said.
He himself gets offered quite a bit of re-write work. He said it is more often than not a very time-consuming assignment because it nearly always ends up being a page-one re-write. The usual problem? You guessed it: The original script was not character-driven.
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