This episode of Zack's Film Talks at SDSU is hosted by Libsyn.

My guest is Michael Green, who wrote Blade Runner 2049 with Hampton Fancher.

Michael was raised in Mamaroneck, NY, and went to Stanford University. He wrote for Sex and the City and is the co-creator of American Gods.

In this episode, Michael talks about:

the importance of reading
why it's good to go to the movies, as opposed to just watching them
how he once made two stacks of film scripts—ones he felt were better than his, and those he felt he could do better than—and spent time studying and learning "by dissection" from the best
JohnAugust.com—a screenwriting website/podcast he highly recommends
Green Lantern and his early fascination with comics
the "constant battle" he undergoes between creating original projects and working on adaptations

To prep for Blade Runner 2049, Michael read the great noir novels. We collected a few lists here: https://www.amazon.com/Hardboiled-America-Lurid-Paperbacks-Masters/dp/0306807734, http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice/best-old-school-noir-novels-20160217, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/50-must-read-noir-detective-novels/.

Full interview transcription:

Hello, and welcome to Zack's Film Talks at SDSU, a film podcast featuring interviews with screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, and more. This is Episode 1.

My guest today is screenwriter Michael Green, who co-wrote Blade Runner 2049. Michael talks about the importance of structure in a screenplay, and he warns writers not to become paralyzed by research. Our conversation was recorded November 9, 2017.

ZS: Hey, Michael, how are you?

MG: Hey, great.

ZS: Thank you so much for doing this, by the way.

So was there a particular moment in your life when you knew you wanted to be in the film industry or just screenwriting in general?

MG: … That question comes up from time to time, because people will often look for creation myths in writers and writing. Unfortunately, writers and writing tends to be a much less romantic profession—much more a slog. But what I can definitely track in myself is a persistent love of television and film. Even times when I wanted to be a doctor or a comedian or carpenter or doctor or any of the other things that seemed appealing, I did all that fantasizing while watching way too much TV and wanting to go to the movies. That's where my passion lay. And I just got very fortunate that I had a moment of brain connection that perhaps I should do what I loved, and also even more fortunate that I was given the opportunities to do so.

ZS: Great. So is there anything in particular that gives you inspiration as a screenwriter?

MG: I think any screenwriter that doesn't read a lot is probably not tapping into their best potential or inspiration. Reading has always been what makes for more writing—and going to the movies, and watching television shows that are great and wonderful. These days going to the movies as opposed to just watching them at home—they're very different experiences. … [I]n television, [watch] the show on-air the way the audience would see it. So if it's a network show … watch it on the air with commercials. …

ZS: Yeah, I definitely agree. I think going to the movies is probably just the best way to watch anything. It gives you a completely different experience than just watching it in your own home.

MG: Absolutely. It's an indulgence. But one should indulge, especially if that's your art.

What's the last movie you saw in a theater?

ZS: It was actually Blade Runner.

MG: Oh! Good answer! I will take that!

ZS: It was great, by the way.

MG: I strongly recommend that the next movie you see be Murder on the Orient Express. …

ZS: So you mentioned reading in one of your answers. I saw that you—I read the Hollywood Reporter interview where you said that when you started writing you made two stacks of scripts: one that you thought your work was better than and work that you thought was better than yours. How did you differentiate that?

MG: You're asking the right question because it was an incredibly arrogant statement I made—that I'm able to look at a stack and … determine with any accuracy whether I'm better or worse. … What that really means is that I started to have an opinion about what I thought was good—

ZS: Okay.

MG: —and applied that to my own writing. You might be wrong, but at least you're starting to develop your own metronome that you're going to start keeping time to. The more you read, the more you know what works, what doesn't—what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and how to approximate that.

When I was starting—it was twenty years ago exactly, and that makes me a very old person, especially compared to you ...—but scripts were very elusive then. It was like, "Oh my God, you got a copy of the script of Tim Burton's Batman…? How? They were these secret things—you could only get them if you knew someone . … People sold them on the streets in New York for five bucks. They were these magic things.

You could go to Sam French and read every play in the world—which you should. But screenplays now are generally available on the Internet, and every TV show—you can read all the scripts. You can read the scripts and reverse-engineer: how did they do that? How did they get that image on the page? … How did they—was that dialogue on the page, or was it adapted by the actor … or was that word-for-word what was written? How did they structure it?—secretly the hardest thing in screenwriting. And you can start to learn by dissection.

So I was fortunate that I lucked my way into a job where I had access to scripts. …And now they're all PDFs. Get 'em all! Read them and understand. This person has a fancy reputation … but they're terrible! Oh my gosh! I can have that job. Or: holy crap, this person wrote something that makes me think I suck. I want to be as good as that. … Get your ego invested, either positive or negative … because that's your profession. … See how you feel about other people's work.

ZS: I totally agree. Since I've been recently getting into screenwriting, I go on those websites that have all those PDFs, all the files. It's great to look at it—especially with actions and sequences. If it's a movie I've seen, like, five times, I go look at the screenplay and I can actually see it as it's happening.

MG: Yeah! …There are a few screenwriters of note who have dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to websites, especially John August—JohnAugust.com. John August is an incredible screenwriter, a very nice guy. … Anytime people ask me starting-out questions, I always refer them to his website, or [Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina's] Children of Tendu, because they've done all these wonderful podcasts with really, really smart answers to questions that everyone has. John August started an FAQ about screenwriting twelve years, ten years ago. And if you just started reading backwards from his recent posts back to the original, you would know a lifetime of screenwriting advice. It's incredible.

All of this stuff used to be so esoteric—you couldn't get answers to that. You didn't have access to. … So it's an incredible time to be an aspiring screenwriter—

ZS: Yeah.

MG: —because it's all there for you to learn. The only thing is on top of that make sure to read things that aren't just screenplays. … You still need to be someone who has something to write about, which means you have to cultivate interests. … No one wants a film about people who want to make films. … Not that there isn't a good version of it, but there are a lot of them out there. Sometimes that's the only experience people have. So make sure to have other experiences in your life. …

ZS: So I saw in another interview that you—

MG: —It's a fancy way of saying: make sure to goof off!

ZS: Yeah. That's a good way to put it.

So I saw in another interview that you were very into comics growing up. Is that one way—one platform of reading that you kind of got motivated off of, since you've obviously written a few superhero-oriented movies?

MG: Ah, definitely, I mean, any reading is good reading. Anything that you gravitate to is worth doing. … I read a lot of comics growing up, but I wasn't very thoughtful about it or reflective about why I liked these things, or didn't even have a really strong sense of what I liked. I just wanted to consume it all. But I can look back on those experiences and s...