Author: Donald L. Vasicek

Award-winning writer/filmmaker Donald L. Vasicek studied producing, directing and line producing at the Hollywood Film Institute under the acclaimed Dov Simens and at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. He studied screenwriting at The Complete Screenplay, Inc., with Sally Merlin, daughter of the famed Hollywood Merlin family of screenwriters and writers, as his mentor. Don has taught, mentored, and is a script consultant for over 300 writers, directors, producers, actors and production companies. He has also acted in NBC’s “Mystery of Flight 1501”, ABC’s Father Dowling starring Thomas Bosley, and Red-Handed Productions’ “Summer Reunion.” These activities have resulted in his involvement in over 100 movies during the past 23 years, from major studios to independent films including MGM’s $56 million “Warriors of Virtue”, Paramount Classic’s “Racing Lucifer”, American Picture’s “The Lost Heart” and “Born To Kill” starring the Charles Bronson of Korea, Bobby Kim, and his internationally-known brother, Richard, who directed, Incline Productions, Inc.’s “Born To Win”, 20th Century Fox’s “Die Hard II” starring Bruce Willis with Rennie Harlan as director, and Joel Silver as producer, Olympus Films+, LLC’s “Haunted World” with Emmy-nominated PBS Producer Alison Hill, and Olympus Films+, LLC’s “Faces”, “Oh, The Places You Can Go” and the award-winning “The Sand Creek Massacre” documentary film. Don also has written and published over 500 books, short stories and articles. His books include “How To Write, Sell, And Get Your Screenplays Produced” and “The Write Focus.” He has been a guest screenwriting and filmmaking columnist for Hollywood Lit. Sales, Moondance International Film Festival’s e-zine, Screenwriter’s Forum, Screenplace, Screenplayers.Net, Screenwriters.Net, Screenwriters Utopia, Spraka & Kinsla (Swedish), Inkwell Watch, and Ink On the Brain. Writing recognition includes Houston’s WorldFest International Film Festival, Chesterfield’s Writer’s Film Project, Writer’s Digest, The Sundance Institute, The Writer’s Network, and the Rocky Mountain Writer’s Guild, Inc. Don completed producing “The Sand Creek Massacre”, a documentary film project that includes the completed and award-winning documentary short, a book, a classroom video, Interactive Media, a study guide, and a lesson plans. The film is being distributed by Films Media Group. Don is on the board of directors of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston. He is the founder and owner of Olympus Films+, LLC, a global writing and filmmaking company and a screenwriting volunteer on AllExperts.com. Don’s screenwriting agent is Robin Kaver of the Robert Freedman Dramatic Agency, Inc., 1501 Broadway, Suite 2301 New York, NY 10036, 212-840-5751.
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Professors of the Heart

By

Donald L. Vasicek

Perhaps it was the touch. You know the kind. Sort of a gentle tug like a puppy would yank on your pant leg. Playfully, but with purpose. With design, but loving. I looked around. It was Elsie. Elsie was stocky, particularly for a middle school student. “Coach, coach, you know what happened in school today?” she said as she pushed some French fries into her mouth.

“You passed the math quiz,” I said. Her hair was styled and cut at about the ears like a pageboy only her bangs were curled. They danced about like springs and disguised her age. Possibly her face too, which was round and more wide than long. She came into view as an old soul of twelve years particularly when I gazed into her eyes. She cuffed my arm and giggled like a girl of her age. “No, silly, I beat Marty in the spelling test.”

I gawked at Marty standing at Elsie’s elbow. Strange thing, they were one year apart, Marty being older, but Elsie was two hands taller. Marty blinked her dark eyes at me in a “so what” manner.

I smiled. Marty’s raven hair glowed from the lights in the cavernous gym at Aurora, Colorado North Middle School. Her ruffled dark eyes pecked at me like a chicken.

“What’s wrong, Marty?” I said as a roar swelled in the brimming stands at one end of the basketball court. Parents, relatives and friends cheered our team, the Jaguars. It was tournament time. The smell of sweat, cologne, hot dogs, potato chips, cherry cola soda, mustard, pickles, onions, M&M’s, berry licorice ropes, popcorn and a host of other concession goodies rode the wind and no one was going to miss out.

Marty actually was quite small for thirteen. Her peers spiraled over her. Somewhere within her mind though, I suspected, height meant nothing to her.

“He’s pushing me. He hit me. He won’t let me shoot the ball. I hate him.” Tears puddled in her eyes. “Who?” I asked. Her arm and finger shot out like an arrow. “Him.” I followed her point of the compass to a male kid about six feet with dusty blond hair that looked like rats got into fight in it. With very little body fat, if any, his boxy shoulders made him appear powerful and intimidating. Just then, he pushed a runt of a kid, Little Carson, we called him, to the floor.

I straightened out as Little Carson’s big, round brown eyes, actually, out-distancing his emaciated face, woofed at the bully.

“You pushed me.” The big kid laughed. He didn’t know that Little Carson was developmentally disabled. Actually he probably wasn’t really that aware that he was also developmentally disabled, as were all of the kids on his team and our team. He was playing in the Colorado Special Olympics Basketball Tournament, and that’s what mattered to him. Little Carson was in the kid’s face, or in fact, looking up at him like he was peering at a redwood tree.

“Little Carson,” I shouted. Little Carson seeded his hands to his boney hips. He formed the word, “but”, when the ball popped him in the chest. He grabbed it and started dribbling it around and around in a circle; a beetle bug in the middle of a bunch of kids of all dimensions trying to chase him down.

“See, see,” Marty said. “He hurt Little Carson and I hate him.” Marty’s eyes spit out the feeling of disappointment. Elsie hauled on my arm. This time it had more urgency in the touch.

“Put me in, put me in, coach.” A basketball rolled out onto the court from behind me. I looked at Sara who sat on the bench with Dustin, a gaunt autistic kid, intelligent, but who could only spit when he tried to speak and Jarod, an inky-haired kid with a face that emerged like one side of it had been run over by an SUV. Sara toyed with her hands like they belonged to someone else.

I grabbed the ball just as the teams, like a tidal wave, swept down the court after Little Carson. I glanced at Sara. If it hadn’t been for her Down Syndrome disability, I could’ve sworn she was grinning at me.

I squatted by Marty. I placed my hands on her shoulders. I looked her squarely in the eyes. “Marty, you don’t hate him. After the game’s over, I want you to congratulate him on playing a good game. Okay?”

I looked at the scoreboard. Jaguars 4 Vipers 32. I shot a glance at Little Carson. Tall Vipers swarmed him.

Elsie chewed on her fingernails. She moved about like she had to go to the bathroom. “Put me in, coach, put me in.”

Then Jarod was at my arm. And Dustin. Jarod spoke first. “I’m a pro, coach.” Dustin spewed drool at me. He held his folded hands down, his arms crossed. Then, I noticed he had wet his basketball shorts, or at the least, spilled water on them.

“There’s just a few seconds left.” I investigated each kid like I wanted to give them everything they desired and more. They only wanted one thing. To play basketball.

And Marty was quietly crying. “It’s not fair,” she said. “I could’ve made the winning shot.”

“So could I,” Jarod shouted as he mimed a shot.

And now, Dustin, crossed his legs like he really had to go to the bathroom. “Dustin, do you have to go to the bathroom?” He stared at me. Right through me. Then, his father appeared. A tall, skinny, distinguished looking man of about 40, took Dustin’s hand and they headed for the bathroom.

The horn blared the end of the game. Little Carson continued dribbling the ball. I watched Marty as the two teams walked single file past each other high-fiving. When Marty got to the big kid with the boxy shoulders, she whispered something in his ear. He nodded unremarkably.

The gym had emptied out. I had managed to collect all of the Jaguars’ basketballs and put them in the net bag. I was heading for the exit when I heard someone call out, “Coach.” I turned. Marty beckoned me with her pint-sized finger. She stood right in the center of two full-sized courts. They absorbed her like a sponge.

I walked over to her. She turned and indicated the route of the grandstands. We faced them. She installed her arm around my waist. “That’s my Dad.”

I looked at a broad man with a head of hair like a male lion’s mane, step out in front of us several feet away. “Okay, Dad,” she said. He directed a camera at us. Marty took my hand. She held it. Her dad snapped several pictures.

Dr. Alexa Roberts, Donald L. Vasicek

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The Screenwriter’s Success Formula

The Screenwriter’s Success Formula
By
Donald L. Vasicek

Wouldn’t it be nice to come up with a formula that you could use to write, sell and get your screenplays produced? Well, guess what? There is a formula. A- list screenwriters use it all the time. That’s one reason they are A-list writers.

The formula resides in the genre of film they are writing. There are several steps they follow. Some say there are twelve steps. Others say it depends upon the genre to determine how many steps you use. And still others say there are seventeen steps. The fine point of it is, if you can figure out the steps and execute them in your screenplay, selling and getting it produced becomes easier.

How do you do this? There are some people who write and sell screenwriting programs that outline steps writers can take to follow the formula of their chosen genre. They charge prices many screenwriters cannot afford. Other screenwriters might not be able to afford them, so they go in hock to buy them. Other screenwriters with day jobs can afford to buy them, so they do. If you’re one of those who cannot afford them, then there is another way to figure out the genre formulas.

The first step is to make sure the genre you have chosen for your screenplay fits the characters and storyline. The way you do this is to think about movies that you have seen or that you want to see. Consider if your movie idea parallels any of these movies. If you find one that does, you’re on your way. If you find more than one, even better.

The next thing you have to determine is if you want to write a screenplay that bears the potential of becoming a blockbuster. If you do, then you have to plug into a formula for writing it. If you don’t, the odds that you can write, sell and get your screenplay produced substantially decreases.

You have to realize that by writing screenplays, you have placed yourself in a situation where the odds for success are severely limited. There just aren’t enough movies made each year to match the number of screenwriters and screenplays out there. Just check with the Writer’s Guild of America if you don’t believe me. Check with productions companies, agencies and managers.

So, you should make a conscious decision before you begin writing about whether you want to write a formula screenplay, or go your own way and simply write a screenplay. If you decide that you want to write a formula screenplay, then, you have to follow a formula.

If you follow a formula, then you must know what genre you’re writing in before you begin. Once you determine these things, in lieu of buying the expensive screenwriting program, take that one movie, or those movies you found that parallel your movie idea, and study them. Try to find others that are similar and study them. Outline them scene-by-scene. Compare what you are discovering with each movie that you’re dissecting. FIND THE FORMULA for your chosen genre. It’s there.

Once you accomplish this, then you can outline your screenplay using this formula, and begin writing your screenplay.

Sound simple? Try it. I did that with THE CROWN/BORN TO WIN, an action/adventure feature I wrote and sold and it was produced. I studied BLACK STALLION and outlined it scene-by-scene. I did the same thing with several other movies of the same genre that contained elements of what I wanted to write. Dialogue. Visuals. Action. Description. Characters. Story. Even story beats. What I learned about the action/adventure formula by doing that was all the difference between getting my screenplay written, sold and produced and failing at it.

So, if you want to write, sell, and get your screenplays produced, you might want to try this. It works.

Outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming

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Hollywood, Writing, and Reflections of Reality

by
Donald L. Vasicek

Doc Holiday’s Grave – Glenwood Springs, Colorado

A few years ago, two producers greeted me when I stepped off the plane at LAX in Los Angeles. I’d barely made the flight. Seems the driver from my hotel in San Francisco miscalculated the traffic on the way to the airport. I had to race through security and virtually jumped on the plane to make the flight.

I was in LA at the producers’ request to discuss 2 scripts of mine. The glitz, the glamour, the pain, the agony; it was all present. Sony, CBS, and through Universal Pictures, this energy appeared to be stalking, or perhaps, following me.

It was Hollywood, but all the same, we discussed my scripts. One producer had her assistant retrieve a file. When he brought it, I swear he was carrying a baby elephant, the file was so big.

“Notes,” the producer said. Notes on my scripts. “Here’s what needs to be done, to change it, to make it high concept, you know, how that it is?”

I nodded, spied the glass of water in my hand.

“You know,” she said, “Getting your scripts produced is like winning the lottery.”

Perhaps you have to live in the fast lane, whatever that means, to be successful in the film business. There is one thing for certain, as the producers hammered my head, particularly, now on the way to a meeting with my agent, “If you don’t write for the sheer joy of writing, you are not going to succeed in Hollywood,” the female producer said.

They went on to tell me they thought my scripts were on the edge of being great. We know good scripts have to be great scripts to have a chance. “But,” the male producer said, I was going to have to go back into each script and identify the journeys my protagonists are taking so that I can write the stories more simply and with more authority.

By now, we were waiting for a stretch limo (limos are cliché in Hollywood, but people still use them), to take us to pick up an investor of theirs so that we could go to a dinner at a high-end club and listen to soft jazz over some Russian wine. They wanted her to meet me. I asked them, “How do you know that?”

The female producer explained, (she came from a successful Hollywood family, and was a produced writer/producer), “Your protagonists’ voices, in both scripts, are not quite clear enough. You’re going to have reach down deeper. You’ll know when you have them right.”

Then, perhaps, surprisingly, (we were in the limo slicing through South-Central Los Angeles where stores with bars on
the windows and doors appeared like the 1970’s Dirty Harry sets), the female producer asked me, “What do you want to achieve as a writer?” I blinked.

My agent was on my mind. She was late to the meeting, hugged me, kissed me on the lips and apologized for being late, said her assistant had gotten her schedule mixed up. I swore there was white smudge right under a nostril, but the club where we met had black walls. So was the ceiling, so it was difficult to clearly see details.  And she was so hyper.

“Well, uh, I…” I looked through a tinted window of the limo at an elderly woman in a wheelchair, slumped, with a scrawled sign, “Hungry.” And my back was turned toward the limo driver. Have you ever ridden sitting backwards in a car? It’s surreal if you want to look at it that way.

“I have things I want to share with people,” I said. “I want to see my stories on the screen.”

The female producer studied me with the eyes of a statue. “Then, you aren’t going to make it,” she said.

“Make it?” I asked.

She jabbed at her head. “Here,” she said, her voice cracking, “here is where you write from and here is where you make it.”

The dinner and the show were enjoyable. Some guy cracking some funny jokes. I laughed out loud as I checked out the investor. She was knockout, told me she was engaged to the comedian on stage. He did have some great guns.

Inside, though, I couldn’t wait to get back to San Francisco. Raindrops on the window in my plane appeared like tears on my face as I contemplated the rewrites on my scripts.  I had written them from the heart, with my mind, but then, the female producer, simply, to write from the head, only.  Hmm.

I purchased some oranges, apples, and bananas. Walked on Market Street. Handed out the fruit to homeless people until it was all gone. And then, remarkable as it might sound, I noticed the elderly lady in the wheelchair with the hungry sign from LA. I took her to dinner. I wondered how she had gotten to San Francisco, but then, I also wondered why in the hell the producers had invited me to LA in the first place, and perhaps this lady lived in San Francisco and I was seeing double. And I wasn’t going to ask her. She would’ve thought I was crazy. And who’s to say I wasn’t?

I was certain of one thing.  I had written the scripts from my heart and from my head.  If I were to rewrite them with my head, as the female producer suggested, then, there would be no heart in them.   And, my, friends, how many movies have you seen without any heart in them?  Those that don’t last in the theaters about as long as it takes to rain in Seattle.

The fine point of this story is that everyone has their own idea of what it takes to make a great script.  It’s the same as going to a movie with a friend, then discussing it, and discovering that each of you have differently perceived the movie.  You might like it.  Your friend might hate it.

Another fine point, write from your heart and write from your mind, and learn from others how to make that count.  The learning should be that you learn, but still make up your own mind about how good your script is.  Be objective when learning, but keep in mind that what one thinks is right with respect to writing a screenplay, another may think it is wrong.  It all depends upon the elements you are putting into your screenplay.  The mix of characterization and story, how to mix it, how to make it fine.  It all comes from the heart and the mind.