This issue is a first for me – I’m writing it out on a 50-year-old electric typewriter my girlfriend gave me (thanks Toni!).
Why? Am I that much of a hipster? Well you won’t catch me setting this thing up in Starbucks anytime soon.
But I love the idea of being forced to type forwards only — no going backwards to re-think or re-word a sentence — especially for writing stories.
You’ll never get perfection writing this way, but you will get other benefits that are much more realistic…
This issue of Friday Film Notes is sponsored by: Milanote
Milanote has totally transformed how I prep my film projects. Its intuitive, visual interface makes it easy to brainstorm scenes, track timelines, and collaborate with my team in real time. It keeps all my creative ideas and planning in one place—I love it.
The Challenge
I’ve been fiddling with this machine a lot the past week, and a few days ago I finally put it to the test.
I had to write a new end scene for our upcoming short film (we’ve restructured the script for this thing about 100 times, but finally settled on the definitive shape for it).
I figured this wouldn’t take too long – maybe an hour or two. But since I was essentially starting this new ending from scratch, I figured why not do a first rough pass on the typewriter to see what happens?
This is part of the strategy of intentionally writing “bad first drafts.”
The idea is to churn out some crappy first draft ASAP so you have a starting point from which you can RE-WRITE and eventually find the good version of the story.
Many writers have an annoying internal voice that prevents them from ever getting that first draft out, because every line or word isn’t quite good enough. If you listen to that voice, you’ll never finish the damn thing, so best to bypass it entirely.
Just try to write a bad script. You’ll end up further ahead in the long-run.
Anyway, I used the typewriter because I knew I wouldn’t be able to go backwards and there was 0 risk for distractions.
On top of that, every letter I type on this thing sounds like a gunshot firing off. It makes me FEEL like the things I’m typing are somehow powerful and even dangerous. (They aren’t, but it’s an empowering sensation.)
Fun fact: the “Smith” in Smith-Corona (the brand of this typewriter), refers to L.C. Smith, who got his start manufacturing a popular line of shotguns.
Plus your relationship with each word is different when you’re bringing them to life in such a concrete, loud way.
It’s kind of like a Polaroid keyboard. We don’t give a shit about a pic we take on our iPhone. But a little underexposed 2″ x 2″ Polaroid photo? It feels so more special just for the fact that it is real and tangible.
And I’ve gotten off-topic again. Blame the typewriter. Let me finish my little anecdote.
So I typed up the script’s final scene, just in prose format because who knows how to do screenplay margins and formatting on a typewriter. I just wanted a starting point for the characters, events, and dialogue down on paper.
And I got it down in record time. The words were just flowing, and I had more fun writing those pages than I’ve had in screenwriting for a long time.
When I finished, I assumed I’d do a heavy re-write on my screenwriting software and the end result would bear little resemblance to the typewritten pages.
Well I opened up the screenwriting program on my computer, and everything slowed to a total halt.
Almost immediately I was stuck, trying to figure out how to improve what I’d typed, but coming up blank.
Two hours later I realized that typewritten first draft was the best I had in me for now, so I just transcribed the typed version almost word for word.
I sent it out to my other producers and waited.
Turns out…
They loved it. Amazing!
What now?
Using the typewriter the past week has opened my eyes a bit in how I write and how my brain works.
The killers of good writing (for me) are distractions, perfectionism, and a pervasive cynical feeling that anything I type is going directly into a black void, never to be seen again. In other words, the feeling that I’m not actually creating anything, and the words aren’t real.
The typewriter solves all these problems, but it’s still a bit of an impractical way to write on a daily basis. But I’ll probably continue to anyway—mainly for the dumb reason that I’ve just become addicted to the sounds it makes.
The little bell ding at the end of a line, the ballistic impact of each letter on the page, the desk-shaking whizz-bang of each carriage return… I love it. I often find myself typing nonsense on here just for the sensory experience. It’s like a big fidget spinner (that also lets you type stories and newsletters and stuff…)
Want something more practical?
Many of the creative benefits of a typewriter can be gotten from that Cold Turkey Writer app I mentioned in THIS newsletter. I still use that app to lock myself out of distractions and prevent me from going backwards when I’m writing first drafts. I have no connection to them, I just like it a lot.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the results of this experiment.
That’s all for this week. Happy writing.
(PS – this newsletter is a 2nd draft)
My favorite things this week:
🍿 Movie: The Brutalist
I actually didn’t like this that much, but I’m trying to catch up on Oscar movies. As someone who has no problem with long movies, I can’t figure out why this need to be 3.5 hours instead of 2? And despite its length, it spent so long on small parts of the story and then flew through major events – almost as if they had to cut it down for time still.
Also I saw it in 70mm and the image was dark and muddy. Maybe my theater was poorly set up. At least Adrien Brody and the score were great.
📚 Book: The Kid Stays in the Picture
This memoir from the iconic Hollywood hot-shot of the 60’s and 70’s, Robert Evans (who produced The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and many more classics) was too much fun. Listen to the audiobook version if you can – Evans reads it himself with his distinctive voice and cadence that makes it all the more entertaining. Lots of great candid stories about his dealings with the stars and star-makers of the greatest era of film, although best to take them with a grain of salt…
📹 Video: How they made the Severance Season 2 opening scene (spoilers)
My favorite show lately – just an excellent concept that’s really well executed. They made sure to start the 2nd season with a bang in this insane scene. Very cool to hear how they pulled it off. Ben Stiller gets slept on as a filmmaker. Was Tropic Thunder the last great studio comedy?
Let’s make some movies.
-Kent
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