Recently, a close friend asked me for some screenwriting advice. Now, I am no guru, nor would I ever claim to be. I am not a produced screenwriter (not that they are either.) I have read some books, I have tried the 30 Day Script Challenges, and I have tried to write every day. My knowledge base has been cobbled together over the years from various sources, all in an attempt to figure out what works for me. But there is one source whose influence I would qualify as being more important than others. And that is the writing of Film Crit Hulk.
Now, most anyone reading this likely already has an opinion on FCH. Some people think they're a gimmick or a hack. Some people think they're a hypocrite. Some people think they're a know-nothing garbage man. Some people think they know everything there is to know. All of these feelings are valid! People are multifaceted and everyone has had different experiences. Just as some people like or dislike FCH, some people like or dislike me, or like/dislike you. Personally, FCH's writing has formed the very foundation of not only who I am not only as a filmmaker, but who I am as a person. And there are a lot of reasons for that.
When I first started to take a real interest in filmmaking, it came with a caveat: I wanted to know why movies made me feel the way they did. I knew I loved them but I wanted to understand what it was that activated that feeling in me. Was it some specific way a story was told? The way a scene was shot? A performance? The answer, of course, is a synthesis of all of these. But when I was younger I didn't know that. So I sought to find an answer. I searched all over the place- books, websites, videos, classes. Everything that would give me technical knowledge. But nothing would ever give me a straight, clean cut answer I desired. This makes you feel this way because....
I do not know what article I read first (though I have a hunch it was this one.), but I do remember the feeling I had when I read it. It felt like walking into a gold mine nobody else knew about. Hulk's writing took all of the technical knowledge I had just begun to understand and married it to the emotional knowledge I was already feeling. They looked at movies from a functional perspective, and parsed whether or not a single plot point was the correct choice for the movie a director was trying to make. Hulk's analysis of function spoke to directorial (and authorial) intent and acted as a backdoor into understanding the role of theme and the basics of thematics. They tirelessly dove 10,000 words deep into the basic affects of cinematography, performance, screenwriting, and a host of other topics. And I read every single word of it.
The value and nature of a story beat is crucial in this line of thinking. You are always thinking about the most effective and efficient way to kill three birds (Character, Theme, Plot) with one stone (visual storytelling.) On the page it's about finding the right situation to pull the most out of your character that will propel them through their narrative. In production, it's about shooting and playing the moment for the effect you want it to have for an audience. Obviously it's not a perfect system- if you are ever on a set where things don't go wrong, please call me so I can work there too- but the best filmmakers have enough experience that they can nail this stuff. They know that the edit will remake their film, but if they can nail the core principals of their film down in the script and carry them through to production, it will hopefully come through in the edit and eventual completed product.
These are all things I learned from reading FCH. And it's not like I'm done learning either. Just the other week, Hulk wrote up a piece on their Patreon about Onward and the importance of story perspective. These days, I'm in a place in my life and career where I'm less focused on understanding and more focused on making my own way in the industry. But I do so with the implicit understanding that my foundational understanding is built on the back of a large green Film Critic named Hulk, who was created in a chaotic lab experiement involving Gamma radiation, telepods, and the ghost of Pauline Kael. It created a deep, abiding love (and understanding) of cinema in myself and many like me. For that (and so much more), I am grateful.
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