Almost Linear

The second part of my wide-ranging conversation with Lawrence Michael Levine, the writer and director of Black Bear. We continue by talking more about dialogue and what it’s like getting connected in the film industry. Hop over to part one if you haven’t read it!

J: I’m much better at dialogue than I am at story, that’s something I’ve always been torn about, do you think someone is flat out good at one or not at the other? 

L: I do. I feel like most often fledgling writers are best at dialogue because they listen to it and use it in their everyday lives. I think it’s more common to be better at dialogue when you start out. I know that I certainly was. It took me a lot longer to get a handle on structure. Really, I feel like I’m just getting a handle on it now. I’m an avid reader of screenwriting books or trade related books. There are just lots of different ways to structure a story. But until you know the basic ones that everybody uses, it’s hard to know how to subvert them or mess around with them.

J: Your earlier film jobs, whatever they looked like, where you were getting paid for some of them, how did you encounter those jobs?

L: I had to make my own things first. I raised money for movies, but I didn’t get paid on those. My first three films weren’t… I mean they came out, you know. Those films made some money, but they didn’t make me money. So that’s why I call them semi-professional. For those movies, I had to raise money on my own to make them. And sometimes we still do that, my wife and I. Black Bear is an example of that, kind of. That’s just independent filmmaking. Start out doing cheap movies, however you can, and get them in front of as many people as you can. If people start to like them, you make connections.  I don’t exactly know how people make it now. It’s a different world than the one I came up in, which was different from the world that came before me. So nobody really could give me any good advice. I had to follow what my contemporaries were doing. And my contemporaries were making their own movies on cheap video cameras, playing them at whatever festivals they could get them into. Some of it was luck of just getting into those festivals. I mean, I’d like to think it also had something to do with hard work. Seriousness of purpose or whatever. Lots of people make movies like that and they don’t get anywhere, they go nowhere. But if you’re going to have any shot at all, that’s how I did it.

I didn’t have any connections to the industry or any sort of nepotism to take advantage of. Another way that people make it is they get a job. They come out to Hollywood or New York, and they get a job as an assistant to somebody. They get their foot in the door that way. Writers start out doing all sorts of stuff. Some of them start out as executive assistants. Some of them are assistants to agents. If they can’t get into a writer’s room, they can be an assistant to a writer in a writer’s room. That’s the more insider way to do things, move to L.A. and get a job and start meeting people.

Say you get a job with Judd Apatow, right? You’re Judd Apatow’s, like one of his 19 assistants. It’s not that Judd Apatow is going to read your script or produce it. That’s not what’s going to happen. Maybe one of those other 19 people that you’re assistants with gets to be a writing partner somewhere. Maybe one of those other 19 assistants one day becomes an executive and you know them, show him or her the script. And they’re at a small company and they decide to do it. It’s things like that. You got to come out here and make connections, work, and find a way to keep writing while you do it, which is hard. And just because you’re doing, that doesn’t mean you can’t do the other thing to take whatever money you can make a short, but say you can’t send it to a festival or it doesn’t get into festivals. That’s fine. Show it to the people that you meet. Show it to the other assistants that you’re working with or PAs that you’re working with. When you’re young, you don’t know where other people are going. There are friends that I know from when I was 30, for example, who produced Indies that are now executives at Apple. So, that’s sort  of how you would progress in that. That other route. If the festival one isn’t available to you or you can’t raise money to make films, or you’re not willing to take that kind of risk. But it sounds like you’re making shorts and you’re writing things and you’re doing stuff. You got to keep doing it. And then you also need to get around other people who are doing it in places where those are real industries. You could also do it. You could go to live cheaply in Pittsburgh or something and just make film after film after film and keep trying to get them into festivals. That could be something cool, too. You’re probably better off watching your contemporaries than asking me because the world I came up in is different.

J: I think that was all beautiful advice. Closing out, I’d love to hear anything more you have to say about fundraising, how that worked for you earlier on in your career.

L: At first, it was just about asking anyone. The very first things I did I just paid for myself, with my own savings. I would work jobs and then I would spend the money on a movie. But after that, once I had done stuff and people could see it and know that I wasn’t just stealing their money, that I would actually have a product at the end of it, that I wasn’t like a con man or anything, people were more open to giving me money. It’s about just canvassing your friends and family, anyone who you think can afford it, and keeping the numbers low so if your friend loses their money, it’s only like five thousand dollars. They’re not going to care. Or five hundred dollars, whatever. This is all about having the balls to ask people for it.

Be sure to check out Levine’s film Black Bear, starring Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, and Sarah Gadon, as well as all of his previous works.