There is a strange irony in the world of screenwriting. We spend years searching for the perfect formula, the ideal three-act structure, the precise moment when a character must change, and the magical sequence of events that will transform an ordinary screenplay into something unforgettable. Yet some of the greatest films ever made came from writers who understood that structure was never the destination. It was simply the machinery that allowed the story to come alive. In this fascinating conversation, we welcome Matt R. Lohr, an award-winning screenwriter, essayist, film critic, and co-author of The Dan O’Bannon Guide to Screenplay Structure, who shares what he learned working alongside one of Hollywood’s most imaginative storytellers.
Matt’s journey into Dan O’Bannon’s world began while he was pursuing his MFA in screenwriting at Chapman University. O’Bannon, the legendary writer associated with Alien, Total Recall, and The Return of the Living Dead, had arrived as the school’s filmmaker in residence. At the time, Matt was working on his thesis screenplay under Leonard Schrader, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Kiss of the Spider Woman. When Schrader announced that O’Bannon needed help developing a screenwriting book, Matt’s classmates immediately recognized the opportunity. Before long, he was renting cars to travel from Orange County to O’Bannon’s home in Pacific Palisades, beginning a collaboration that would fundamentally change his understanding of storytelling.
Their first meeting was hardly what you would expect from a traditional masterclass. After a few minutes of conversation, O’Bannon asked Matt whether he had ever taken psychedelic drugs. When Matt admitted he hadn’t, O’Bannon responded that he looked like Clark Kent. It was an appropriately unconventional introduction to a filmmaker whose career had been built on unconventional ideas. Over the next two years, Matt worked closely with O’Bannon, studying movies, examining screenplay structure, and helping develop a book that would eventually become one of the writer’s final creative legacies. After O’Bannon’s death in 2009, his wife Diane approached Matt about completing the manuscript. Matt spent another year polishing and organizing the material, determined to preserve the voice of the man who had taught him so much.
What makes this experience extraordinary is that Matt wasn’t simply learning screenwriting theory from someone who had studied successful movies. He was working directly with a writer who had created them. O’Bannon didn’t need to speculate about whether his ideas could produce compelling cinema. He had already helped create films that terrified, surprised, and entertained audiences around the world. His understanding of story structure came from years of wrestling with his own screenplays, discovering what worked, recognizing what failed, and developing a system that could help writers construct stories with a strong dramatic foundation.
One of the most revealing moments in our conversation involves Alien, a film that continues to demonstrate how brilliantly structure and genre can work together. Matt explains that the first half of Alien operates almost entirely as science fiction. The characters are curious about the unknown. They discover a mysterious signal, explore an unfamiliar environment, and attempt to understand what they have encountered. Then comes the unforgettable chestburster sequence, and the entire emotional experience of the movie changes. Suddenly, curiosity becomes terror. The characters no longer care where the creature came from or what it means. They simply want to survive. The movie has transformed from a story about investigating the unknown into a story about fearing it.
That transformation is more than a clever genre trick. It reveals something essential about storytelling: a screenplay must constantly evolve the audience’s relationship with its characters and conflicts. The most effective stories don’t merely repeat the same dramatic situation with greater intensity. They change the nature of the situation itself. Alien succeeds because its shift feels inevitable rather than arbitrary. The characters are established as believable people before the horror fully takes over. Their relationships matter. Their behavior feels natural. By the time the creature begins hunting them, the audience has already developed an emotional connection to their survival.
Matt contrasts this with Prometheus, which he feels struggles in part because its characters lack the same natural camaraderie. In Alien, the crew feels like a group of working people who have spent considerable time together. Their conversations, disagreements, and casual interactions create a believable social environment. In Prometheus, the characters often seem unfamiliar with one another, making their relationships harder to invest in. This is a valuable lesson for every screenwriter: spectacle can attract an audience, but character relationships are often what keep that audience emotionally involved.
Another unforgettable story comes from Matt’s experience watching The Return of the Living Dead privately with O’Bannon. What began as a routine visit to work on the book became an impromptu screening while O’Bannon reviewed the film’s color correction for a home-video release. As they watched, the director began sharing stories about the special effects, production problems, locations, and creative decisions behind the movie. Matt found himself receiving something few aspiring filmmakers could ever experience: a personal director’s commentary from the person who had made the film. The lessons weren’t delivered through a lecture. They emerged naturally from conversation, observation, and the shared love of movies.
That experience also reinforced how important it is for filmmakers to study the work of other filmmakers. Watching movies for entertainment is wonderful, but watching them with an analytical eye can transform the way you write. Why does a scene work? Why does a character feel believable? Why does a moment of tension land? Why does one film survive a dramatic tonal shift while another falls apart? These questions are essential because the answers often reveal the invisible structure holding the movie together.
Matt also offers one of the most immediately practical screenwriting lessons in the entire conversation: read your dialogue aloud. As he explains, “You’re not writing words that have to live on a page. You’re writing lines that actors have to be able to say.” That simple distinction can transform the rewriting process. Dialogue may look beautiful in Final Draft and still sound completely unnatural when spoken. Characters shouldn’t deliver lines simply because they communicate information efficiently. Their words need rhythm, personality, intention, and the unpredictable quality of real human speech. Matt believes strong dialogue comes partly from being an attentive listener, absorbing how people actually communicate, and developing an instinct for language.
Interestingly, O’Bannon’s book doesn’t attempt to teach every element of screenwriting. He believed some skills, particularly dialogue, depended heavily on a writer’s individual abilities. His focus was helping writers construct a screenplay with a structure that could support the story from beginning to end. The book explores the thinking of Aristotle, Lajos Egri, Syd Field, Robert McKee, and other influential storytelling theorists before presenting O’Bannon’s own approach. The point isn’t that every screenplay must obey one rigid formula. It’s that understanding the mechanics of storytelling gives writers the ability to diagnose problems instead of endlessly rewriting without knowing what’s broken.
We also explore a difficult reality facing screenwriters: Hollywood’s preference for familiar intellectual property. Matt discusses the industry’s obsession with what executives call presale value, meaning a project’s perceived commercial advantage because audiences already recognize the property. This helps explain why studios repeatedly return to remakes, comic books, video games, toys, and established franchises. For a writer developing something completely original, the challenge can be frustrating. A brilliant screenplay may struggle to attract attention while a recognizable brand receives serious consideration before anyone has solved the storytelling problems. Yet the conversation also reminds us that originality remains essential, especially in independent filmmaking, where smaller budgets can create opportunities to take creative risks.
Horror offers a particularly interesting example. Matt points out that horror is one of the few genres where the genre itself can function as the star. Audiences don’t always need a recognizable actor to become interested in a horror film. They may simply love horror enough to give an unfamiliar movie a chance. That built-in audience creates opportunities for independent filmmakers, but it also creates responsibility. Making a horror film isn’t an excuse to rely on cheap shocks or familiar clichés. The best examples use the freedom of the genre to explore something emotionally or psychologically meaningful.
Near the end of our conversation, Matt shares what may be the most important lesson he learned from O’Bannon. Despite writing science fiction, horror, action, and comedy, O’Bannon never primarily thought of himself as a genre writer. He thought of himself as a storyteller. As Matt recalls, O’Bannon would say, “I’m a storyteller. A lot of my stories just happen to involve monsters and things from outer space.” That philosophy cuts through so much of the noise surrounding modern screenwriting. Before you worry about which genre is selling, which streaming platform is buying, or which formula is fashionable, you have to care about the story you’re telling.
For independent filmmakers, that lesson is particularly powerful. You might be shooting a $10,000 creature feature in a basement on weekends, writing a contained thriller for a handful of actors, or developing a science-fiction film with almost no visual-effects budget. The scale of the project doesn’t determine the seriousness with which you should approach it. Your responsibility is to make the best possible version of that story with the resources available. Respect the audience. Respect the characters. Respect the craft. Never assume that working in a popular genre gives you permission to deliver something careless.
And perhaps that is the real secret behind the enduring appeal of Dan O’Bannon’s work. His movies weren’t memorable simply because they featured aliens, monsters, zombies, or spectacular effects. They worked because beneath those extraordinary surfaces were stories built to capture and sustain an audience’s attention. Structure provided the foundation. Character created emotional investment. Imagination gave the films their identity. And a genuine love of storytelling connected everything together.
So the next time you’re struggling with a screenplay, don’t immediately search for another formula to rescue you. Return to the story. Ask what your characters want, what stands in their way, why the audience should care, and how the dramatic situation evolves. Read your dialogue aloud. Study films that have survived the test of time. Learn from filmmakers who have actually faced the challenges you’re facing. And whatever you’re writing, give it everything you have. Because the goal isn’t simply to write a horror movie, a science-fiction movie, or a commercially marketable screenplay. The goal is to tell a story worth experiencing.
Right-click here to download the MP3
Alex Ferrari 1:32
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
Dave Bullis 1:55
Joining me today is Matt R. Lohr. Matt is an award winning screenwriter, essayist, and critic. He holds an MFA in screenwriting from Chapman University and is a co-author of the book *The Dan O'Bannon Guide to Screenplay Structure* Matt, thank you very much for joining us.
Matt R. Lohr 2:10
Thank you, Dave. It's a pleasure to be here.
Dave Bullis 2:12
You know, Matt, like I was saying to you before the podcast started, I am a huge fan of Dan O'Bannon, and you know it was so great to be able to get you to come on to the show because I mean you can sort of you know give us a you know a look into the book that you know others wouldn't be able to have and I didn't mean mean to make that rhyme by the way but so could you you know sort of take us through you know how you actually met Dan and how you you ended up started writing a book with him
Matt R. Lohr 2:36
Absolutely well you mentioned in my introduction that I attended Chapman University which is in Orange County, California. If you follow the Hollywood Reporter rankings every year, it's consistently ranked as one of the top 10 film schools in the world. And I was there as a master student studying screenwriting at the beginning of the century. God, that makes me sound old. And one of the things that the school does every year is they have a filmmaker in residence every year, and they have a filmmaker come in and teach master classes, and they do sort of retrospective screenings of his films, his or her films. The year, my second year in the two-year program, our filmmaker in residence was Dan O'Bannon. Oddly enough, I wasn't actually taking his class. I was deeply immersed at the time in my thesis writing for my thesis screenplay, and my instructor for that was Leonard Schrader. Some of you might know him as the brother of Paul Schrader, who was the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. And Leonard's a pretty was a pretty impressive screenwriter in his own right, probably best known for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which he was nominated for an Academy Award for in 1985. Leonard was my thesis advisor, and one day, about two weeks into our first year or second year of the school, he came to our class and said, "Some of you might know Dan O'Bannon. He's our filmmaker in residence. He's writing a book on screenwriting, and he's hoping to maybe talk to a graduate student about possibly helping him out with the book. And my entire class came to me, basically one one at a time, and said, "Matt, this is a perfect fit for you. You got to do this. So Leonard worked on putting me in touch, and I talked to Dan. And I at the time it was difficult because I was living in Orange County. Dan lived in a fairly well off suburb up in north of LA called Pacific Palisades, and I had no car at the time. So whenever I went to see him, I actually had to rent a car for the day to drive up to Pacific Palisades to to work with him. And we got together the first time I got to his house. He was just finishing up lunch, and we talked for about three minutes. And Dan kind of looked at me and said, "Matt, let me ask you something. Have you ever taken any psychedelic drugs? And and I said, "No, I I can't I can't say that I have. And he kind of eyeballed me and he said, "I didn't think so. You look like Clark Kent. And that that was my introduction to the world, Dan O'Bannon, but it was a good fit. Believe it or not, after that, and we worked together on the book intimately together for about two years, and you know, unfortunately, after that, those of you who know Dan's personal history and know his his past know that he's sort of suffered from had suffered from some chronic health issues throughout his life. He had Crohn's disease, which is a a digestive and intestinal disorder, and battled it intermittently on and off throughout a large period of his life. The last few years, he had taken a turn for the worse. The last time I actually saw him, I think was in 2007, and he was not not looking really very well at that point. He passed away two years after that, in late 2009, the book still hadn't been published yet. At that point, it was still, as far as I knew, a work in progress.
Matt R. Lohr 5:48
And about a year and a half later, Dan's wife Diane, who I'd become friendly with during the course of working on the book, approached me and said, "Michael Weasy Productions, who published Save the Cat and The writer's journey and tons of really well-known screenwriting books are interested in publishing Dan's book, but the manuscript is not 100% ready to go, and they need somebody to take it on, do some polishing, tighten up some sections, and sort of finish things up. You knew Dan better than anybody on this book. You worked with him for two years. Can you do this? So I spent about another year, sort of finalizing the manuscript, and that's the book that that came out and is in stores now.
Dave Bullis 6:29
The book is absolutely phenomenal.
Matt R. Lohr 6:30
Thank you.
Dave Bullis 6:30
Because you know, one of the reasons is is that it's so great, Matt, is it hits a sweet spot that other screenwriting books don't. And what I mean by that is is that Dan not only was an accomplished screenwriter who actually went out and did what he was talking about, but he also knows how to actually teach it. If you know what I mean, and it's such a rare ability to get into that sort of middle ground where you know you're not so advanced that you can't really help anybody out, and and the other end of that spectrum is you've never done anything, so you just you know you teach a lot about it if you know what I mean.
Matt R. Lohr 7:04
Yeah, exactly. Well, Dan, that was one of the things that that helped our book is that you know a lot of screenwriting gurus say this works. Dan was able to say this works, and here are the mega hit classic movies that prove it that I wrote with this system. At the time, there wasn't really a lot of you know people that had really done big scripts like that. There's William. I say only two that I can think of. There's William Goldman with Adventures in the Screen Trade, and then after the publication of Dan's book, or shortly before, you had Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, which was Robert Ben Gurion and Thomas Lennon's book, which is also available. But I think that Dan's, you know, I'd say Goldman also, you know, obviously has a great reputation, and Dan is lucky enough to have some movies that are classics. I actually thought about that this week when the Oscar nominations came out, and Ridley Scott had a movie that's in the running for Best Picture, and I thought, you know, Ridley might not be there if it wasn't for Alien working, and one of the reasons that Alien worked as well as it did is because Dan ripped that character out of his subconscious and helped bring it to life, and I think that it's interesting to me. You know, one of the things that I've experienced just working on the book and promoting it and going to appearances and events and things like that, just the people that really love writing and really love film know Dan and know his work and know what a contribution he made. It's it's it's interesting. Just a lot of times I can tell who the real writers are and who the real film people are when I tell them that I worked with Dan O'Bannon and I don't have to explain to them who that is. And it's it's you know his his reputation sort of precedes, and that's one of the reasons why we kept the title of the book as simple as we did because the selling point is this is screenplay structure according to Dan O'Bannon, and that and the subtitle mentions Alien and Total Recall and the Return of the Living Dead, which of course he also directed.
Dave Bullis 8:54
You know, one of the things about Dan was he was able to just to go to all these different genres, and you know, I was actually watching the Cannon Films documentary about about a week ago, and they actually brought up Life Force, which Dan Dan wrote. And because people were actually the one knock on the film that that some people were in, even though the documentary was saying was
Matt R. Lohr 9:16
Not enough nudity.
Dave Bullis 9:18
Exactly, that's one. No, they they were saying that it was it was so many different things. Some people said, "Well, you know, they didn't really they couldn't get a grasp on it, you know, because you know it starts off in space, then it becomes sort of a vampire movie, and then becomes something totally different by the end. But you know what? I actually think it works because you know, with the way Alien, you know, I actually listened to Alien with with Dan's commentary on it, and he actually went through all the different things. And you know, he said, for instance, you know, when they were landing on that on the to find that distress beacon, and they they they went out and they started to land. And it wasn't a smooth landing, you know. There was a fire broke out, and he said, "You know, I've always wanted to see that one. You know, that that time where nothing goes as smoothly as it's supposed to. You know, even the landing gets screwed up. Yeah, and it's just like details like that. But but the reason I bring up Life Force is, to be honest. I think if that was even released today, or if even a a movie goer, you know, found that today, because I do have it, I do have it in my stash here. But you know, if a person who who's never even maybe heard of Dan, like a like a film student or you know a high school senior, that movie I think would work better today than it than it even did then, because a lot you know I I find that you know sometimes that actually works is that some people some of their works like you know like Court McCarthy's Blood Meridian when it got released you know it didn't really find an audience but it's gained this cult following over the years and and and even like Revenge of the Revenge of the Living Dead because you know when I was a kid watching that, I was so used to Romero.
Matt R. Lohr 11:02
Yeah.
Dave Bullis 11:02
So when I thought when I saw that as a kid, I was like, "Wait, zombies talk now? Did I miss something?
Matt R. Lohr 11:07
Yeah, zombies talk, and and the and the brain thing specifically. Yeah, yeah. Is from Dan. I mean, zombies always ate human flesh, but Dan specifically, because remember at 1.1 of the talking zombies, somebody asked, "Why do you eat people? And she says, not people, brains, and that's that comes. So whenever you see a zombie going brains, you can thank Dan O'Bannon for that. It's interesting that you bring up Life Force. I remember reading an interview with Dan years ago, before I even met him, where he talked about Life Force, and he said that that book that that was based on was called Space Vampires. That movie should have been called Space Vampires. He always felt that that was more in the comment that he made was, you know, we had this kind of crazy, wild science fiction movie, and the studio tried to sell it as 2001, and it really that was one of the reasons why it somewhat didn't connect commercially. Because, and you still see this a lot of times in movies now, where they're selling the film as something the film is not. They're selling the movie they wanted you to have made rather than the movie you actually made, and I think that if they had gone a little more outrageous with some of the marketing, I think the movie might have found the the audience that that it enjoys now is sort of a cult audience. I think it was Scream Factory that put out the Blu-ray of that recently, they did a really great job. It's got great extras. The movie looks great, and I think it's. I've talked to Diane, Dan's wife, about that movie. We're both we're both fans. We both think it's among sort of Dan's maybe unfairly underrated works. We're we're we're life force life force boosters in in Camp Dan O'Bannon.
Dave Bullis 12:41
So you know, Matt. Speaking of that, you know, what is your favorite Dan O'Bannon movie?
Matt R. Lohr 12:45
You know, when I was getting ready to you know start promoting the book, I said I got to revisit all of these because I'm who knows what I'm going to get asked about. And you know, I sat down and I had a chance to watch all of them again. And and you know, there's there's just something I know it's probably an answer a lot of people give, and it's sort of a cliche answer. There is just something about Alien. I always admire a film that's trying to scare you and that's trying to show you spectacular things that stands the test of time. And Alien was made in 1979. I was a year old when Alien came out, and you watch it now, and the scares still work. It's got visual effects that even in 2016, I don't feel like you have to make apologies for or allowances for. I think it's just really, it's so efficiently effective in terms of what it does. And you talked about the idea of sort of mixing genres. The thing I love about Alien that it does so beautifully is that it basically sort of splits down the middle in terms of what its genre is. You have this first hour that is a science fiction movie, and science fiction is about curiosity about the unknown, and they're trying to find out what this thing is and find out where it comes from and what it means for them in terms of good or ill. But as soon as that thing bursts out of John Hurt's chest, all of a sudden we're not in a science fiction movie anymore. We're in a horror movie, which is about fear of the unknown. They don't care what it is or where it came from or what its government is like. They just want to get away from it or kill it. And and it just it's so it transitions so dramatically. It almost could split the movie down the middle as much as it splits John Hurt down the middle. But I feel like they're so beautifully of appeased. I think that actually, I think a lot of credit for that does go to Ridley. I think he does a really beautiful job, sort of sustaining the feel of it throughout. It's got a great vibe and a great mood, and that's that's to his credit. I think in the hands of a lesser director, the movie the split might have been too drastic, and the movie might not have survived it.
Dave Bullis 14:41
I concur. You know, and especially with you know Ridley now when he revisited the engineer because the engineer what we saw in Alien, it was pretty big. You know, I remember them going on. You know, right by it, and you know the engineers and Prometheus were, although they were still big, they were a tad bit. Smaller,
Matt R. Lohr 15:00
Yeah,
Dave Bullis 15:01
And you know, you know. Again, I was when when I when I saw the commercial for Prometheus, and I actually saw that that mask. I was like, oh my god, if they just connect those two, that would be amazing, because being able to see what happens. But then I actually enjoyed Prometheus. I know I'm in the minority with that because I I kind of had a feeling going in. I said, you know what? What if they just stretch this out into its own trilogy, and then you know what I mean? And then you know, and then at the end, spoiler alert, everybody. You know, I'm pretty much sure everyone's seen it by now. But they end up, you know, it's a cliffhanger ending, and they're gonna, you know, now, now Prometheus Two is coming out soon. It's 10 years later. So, but yeah, but you know that that was actually, you know what, Matt? I wanted to ask you. What did you did you get the chance to see Prometheus?
Matt R. Lohr 15:43
I did. If you go to the Michael Weese Productions website, which is the the website of the production company or the the publish the book, Diane and I actually do a video presentation where we talk in fairly extensive detail about sort of comparing and contrasting Alien with Prometheus, I think for me the failure the failures of Prometheus. I don't think I think there's great things in it, but I don't think it's an entirely successful film. Is I think the failure for me is are more failures of character than of story. I feel like one of the things that I love about Alien is you're with a crew of people that have been with each other for a while, and I think Ridley establishes that really well, and Dan establishes that really well in the writing and the direction. I always like that first scene where we see them eating together right after they've gotten out of their hypersleep chambers, and there's just such a natural, easy, unforced camaraderie between them. Ridley kind of just shoots it, sort of hanging back on the wall, watching it almost feels like something out of a Robert Altman movie, and I just feel like you invest in them so thoroughly because they bring you into that atmosphere and into that camaraderie. With Prometheus, we're dealing with a lot of people that have never met each other, that don't really know each other, they don't know what their intentions are, and I feel like that lack of sort of connection between the people in the in the crew, sort of hampers the ability for the movie to maybe to have the emotional impact it might otherwise have had.
Dave Bullis 17:09
You know, and one other thing too in Prometheus was, you know, they had a scene similar to that where the crew was all sort of hanging out. Now in Prometheus, you know, they they showed us that the crew really didn't know each other too well, right? Exactly, and and and the one character who always gets beat over the head is that character Feifeld, and because you know he's sort of the Irish stoner who's also I think he's a PhD in in in in something with animal studies, but you know basically he said I'm just in this for the money, and they a lot of criticism was basically they tried to take that same conversation from Alien and make it into Prometheus. Yeah. Because, but the the the reason why it doesn't work, and and even I agree, even though I like Prometheus, as I said, I you know the one reason it doesn't work is is because one you figure these people would meet each other before this because they this is a a very expensive trip. Yeah, like that that that that's made clear from the start. And and you know, an alien, they're a bunch of miners. You know what I mean? Like you know the the blue collar, you know, men and women, and they're just like, look, we're just getting home with this haul of, I think ore is what they had, or some kind of minerals.
Matt R. Lohr 18:15
Yeah.
Dave Bullis 18:16
And
Matt R. Lohr 18:16
Dan Dan described them as truckers in space was the kind of atmosphere he wanted.
Dave Bullis 18:21
Yeah, it feels that way because, like, like you just said, they feel like they were a team. But with Prometheus, you know, you you just sort of feel like it was almost like they just threw everyone together at the last minute and said, "Hey, we're going to space now.
Matt R. Lohr 18:32
Yeah, exactly. And and whether or not you actually have chemistry and connect as a crew is of secondary concern to us. You know, that that's something you want to throw that kind of money behind, obviously.
Dave Bullis 18:44
You know, you know, Matt. One of the other things, you know, in the book, in the in the prefix, which you know you actually did an intro for. I have to to to ask. You know, you got a private showing of of of Revenge of the Living Dead with with Dan, Return Living Dead. Sorry, Return Living Dead with Dan, you know, and you actually got to sit down with him and watch it. You know, you know, what was that like to actually sit down there and you know watch a movie like that with him?
Matt R. Lohr 19:08
Well, I didn't know that that was going to happen. I went over there, you know, it was we were going to be working on the book. I think they were living in Culver City at that point or Marta Vista, and you know, I dropped by the house. We were planning to get together for our regular work session, and at the time, I believe it was MGM was getting ready to put out. It was an anniversary edition. I can't remember what anniversary. Might have been 25th, and they were getting ready to put out a 25th anniversary edition of Return of the Living Dead on DVD because I don't think Blu-ray was even a thing yet at that point. Shows you how old I am once again, and they sent over a VHS copy of the movie to show you how old we all are now. To basically for Dan to check the color correction to make sure the color looked right, and he just said to me, "Let's look at some of this, and we can let me know if you see if the color looks all right. And we basically sat and watched the whole movie. And Dan more or less did sort of an ongoing. It was like getting basically a live director's commentary, and Dan told me about you know how they did some of the special effects and about different problems they had with locations and this and that. And it was just a really, it was one of the most hands-on sort of direct learning experiences I had, and it was such a great insight into Dan's mind. Because one of the things I always tell people is, people always ask me, "Well, what, you know, what did Dan? What's the main thing that Dan taught you about screenwriting? And I always say, "Well, Dan didn't really teach me anything because I wasn't there to be taught by him. I was there to enable his book to help him to teach others, but I always feel like I learned so much just being in Dan's presence and talking story with Dan and breaking down scripts with Dan. I always say I almost learned like it was like osmosis. I almost just absorbed these things through the natural interaction of putting the book together, and it was, you know, sort of a a sitting at the feet of the master kind of experience for me. And I've always, it's something I'll never be able to to replicate in my life. And it's something really, it means a lot. It just means a lot that there was, you know, I thought about it one day, and I thought about people like Ron Chisset, with whom Dan wrote Total Recall, they share credit on Total Recall, and I thought about Don Jacoby, who he wrote Blue Thunder with, and I'm part of that group now. I'm I'm part of the group of Dan O'Bannon writing collaborators, and it's it's very it's very humbling to to be in that kind of company.
Dave Bullis 21:36
Yeah, it definitely is, and you know, Total Recall is a movie, I don't know why I I enjoy it a lot, and I always forget that Dan wrote it. I don't. I you know I I I know um with Alien, I know Life Force, uh, but you know every time I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, Dan Dan O'Bannon wrote that. But um, but you know once I I go back to it, you know Matt, I I always come back and I'm like you know what this feels like a Dan O'Bannon movie, yeah, because because you know it's it starts off a certain way and it goes off another way, and you know personally by the way just a note about that writing style, I think that I I actually find that to be fascinating, but it also I think it does well for stories too. I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you there.
Matt R. Lohr 22:16
Oh no problem. No one of the things I do think that people can find in Total Recall, and I think this is probably why he may have sort of connected with Hal Verhoeven in some respects. Is Dan had a real wicked sense of humor? Anybody that's seen Return the Living Dead knows that, and I do think that that wicked sense of humor from Dan comes through in Total Recall. There's one moment in the movie, because I read Dan's original draft of Total Recall from 1982. Diane gave me a copy of it that I read, and I can tell you very specifically one line that I absolutely know originates with Dan because it's not in the original story and it's in Dan's script. Is the scene when the Schwarzenegger character Quaid confronts his wife, who's actually the spy character, and he asks her something, and she says, "I don't know. I just work here. That's that's it. And I had a chance a couple of years ago, shortly before the book came out. The Egyptian Theater, which is a great repertory theater on Hollywood Boulevard here in L.A. showed Total Recall. They had a 70 millimeter archive print of it from from the Sony archives, and they showed the film, and Paul Verhoeven and the two surviving screenwriters, Ron Chisset and Gary Goldman, were there and did a Q and A after the film, and it was wonderful to be in a packed house of people and see that movie, which at that point was over. You know, now it's going on. I think God, it's 25 years old, almost 26 years old, and that movie still plays with an audience. The laughs still land. The thrills are still there, and it was just really exciting to be in that group. And I will say that once I opened it up to the crowd for questions, I was very happy that one of the first questions that got asked was somebody in the audience asked for them to expound a little on Dan's contributions to the script because he was, of course, the only writer who wasn't there, unfortunately, to speak for himself.
Dave Bullis 24:04
Yeah, and that is good. Someone actually, you know, brought that up. You know, one one thing about you know Total Recall was, well, not about the particular Total Recall, but they they actually remade it a few years ago, and I was completely, you know, I was kind of, you know, confused. I mean, I know right now, you know, there's a certain model that Hollywood works with. You know, if it's not a comic book movie, it already has to be a you know established property, like you know a remake of a TV show or in this case a previous movie. So you know, when when the the total re Total Recall remake came out, I was curious. I did check it out, and it it is in no way as good as the original. I don't know if you had a chance to check out the remake.
Matt R. Lohr 24:46
I did see it. I I think it's it's not bad for what it is. To to expound a little bit on what you were just talking about, there's a term that your you and your audience, when you dig sort of into the industry side of things, are going to come across being. Used a lot. It's a very common term now, and that term in the industry is presale value. A lot of times, you'll hear about people having their scripts rejected by producers or studios because they're told this is a very good piece of work, but it has no presale value. What that essentially means is this is not a property that we can easily sell because it's not based on something that people already know, that's why you're seeing so many films based on comic books, based on video games, based on board games, based on toys, and part of that I think has to do with the fact that unlike the '70s when Dan kind of came up, studios are no longer being run by creatives; they're being run by business people. You have people that are not coming out of USC or UCLA Film School or NYU Film School, running things. You have people instead who are coming out of Wharton. You have people that are coming out of the Harvard Business School who are running these kinds of organizations, and because of that, their instincts a lot of times are not to create, but to repackage something that already worked and try to resell it to you as something new. And it's I think Dan mentions in the book. I want to say the comparison he makes, if I remember correctly, is you know you might have a great, fantastic original script with something fresh and innovative and new that nobody's ever seen before, and then this other guy over here wrote a movie based on Chips Ahoy cookies, and people have heard of Chips Ahoy cookies, so that's very gonna have a lot easier time to try to get made. I remember reading stories in the trades for a few years that one of the studios was trying to get a Stretch Armstrong movie made. I don't know if you remember Stretch Armstrong, which
Dave Bullis 26:33
Oh yeah, I remember.
Matt R. Lohr 26:33
Yeah, the whole plastic. His arms stretch out. The the end. That's the whole story. And they were like fighting for three years to try to get a Stretch Armstrong movie off the ground because people have heard of Stretch Armstrong, so you know it's not as if the world needed a fresh take on Total Recall. It's not as if there was a burning desire. And I'll say this: watching the movie again a few years ago, the special effects again still hold up. Those are two Dan movies, Alien and Total Recall, both of which won Academy Awards for special effects, and in both cases, I think the effects in both of those films cooled up. So it's not like you needed to update the technology to make it work. It's simply a question of there are a lot of people out there who won't watch a movie that's set in 199 or that was made in 1990. That's an old movie to them. So if you can give them the same material, I mean that's why we're seeing remakes of Friday the 13th, and Texas Chainsaw Horror is also you know doing a lot of that as well, and it's because a lot of those audiences for those movies skew young, but they won't watch movies that they perceive to be old, which would be a movie from 1990, and Friday the 13th is even older than that. So I do think that that has a lot to do with it as well. I don't know if it's necessarily a dearth of creativity. It's just it's easier to sell something that audiences are already familiar with.
Dave Bullis 27:51
Yeah, you know, and you know, one of the things I've always seen now is superhero movies, the graphic novels. You know, and I can understand too. You know, because I I remember reading an article a couple years ago when Edgar writes. Oh, I can't believe I'm blanking on this movie. Let me let me just take a quick look at whatever this movie's called.
Matt R. Lohr 28:12
Was this Ant Man?
Dave Bullis 28:13
No, it was it was Scott.
Matt R. Lohr 28:19
Oh, Scott Pilgrim versus the World.
Dave Bullis 28:20
Yes, Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Thank you. You know, a couple years ago, when I when I read an article about you know Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim versus the world, and it didn't do so well in the box office. And and the writer said, this is why whenever something like this happens, the the president of the studio can point at and say, aha, you see, this is why everything has to be a pre-existing property. This is why we go with the superhero movies. This is why we go with the comic book movies. This is why we do remakes. And you know, just if you just going it through that sort of point of view, I I did understand it a little bit better as to why certain things the way they are. I mean, and now as we you know sit here, you know, Star Wars is just crossing. What I think it's right near 2 billion worldwide,
Matt R. Lohr 29:09
Something like that. Yeah,
Dave Bullis 29:11
And I mean, you know, it's sort of like those are the you know those are the ones that are that are becoming the blockbusters. You know, I mean, Hateful Eight made what 50 million at the box office, and now that's you know some people are saying it bombed already. Yeah, you know it's it's it's just it's an interesting time in the Hollywood system to say the least. If you know you know I, and I know in the independent circuit, you know there's a lot of there as you and mainly I talk to people in the independent circuit on this podcast, but you know things are a little different. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like things things can you we can take a lot more chances because I mean, granted, obviously we're working with a lot less money, but also because most people are are crowdfunding or just taking out their own pocket, so they have nobody to answer to.
Matt R. Lohr 29:50
I haven't I have actually an interesting theory about Scott Pilgrim versus the world. I think I'm the only person I've heard really advances, but I really think this might be the case. Um, because Scott Pilgrim vs. the World actually was based on a pre-existing property. It was based on a pretty popular American published manga series by a guy named Brian Lee O'Malley, and it's a series that does have a pretty substantial cult following. My theory is this: I know tons of people who have seen Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I don't know a lot of people that paid to watch it. I think it might be the most demonstrable case we have of a movie that might have been killed at the American box office by illegal downloading and internet piracy, because I think it was a case of a lot of people who think of entertainment as their right and not their privilege? Who decided to download the movie illegally because them seeing it was more important than them rewarding the people who made it for them to see? It's something that I-that's a topic that I really get on people about pretty hard. A lot of people are surprised that I don't illegally download movies, and I always tell them when my movies are out there, I don't want people illegally downloading mine, so I'm not going to do the same thing to somebody else. I've lost friends over this topic. I I remember lacing into a guy about the Avengers because he watched it on online, and I said, "Yo, you're you're the reason that Hollywood struggles at the at the box office is because you're doing this, and I and I basically told him it's not your right to see the Avengers; it's your privilege to see it. If you go and buy a ticket, I'm I'm getting a little fired up. I'm sorry, it's a topic that I'm I'm passionate about because I
Dave Bullis 31:32
Oh no I I completely understand Matt. Yeah,
Matt R. Lohr 31:34
And it just you know it's I I don't like the idea that, and it's interesting that we're talking about Star Wars because if if there's ever you know a group of fans out there who felt like they were owed something, it might be it might be the Star Wars. I actually the a couple days ago you know the Academy Award nominations came out, and I put a joke headline up on Facebook. It was supposed to be breaking news, and it was something like Los Angeles burns as fanboy mobs protesting Star Wars Best Picture snub clash with fanboy mobs celebrating Star Wars best picture snub, and it's it's just it's fanboy culture is a very weird thing. I always say, as far as what I call fanboy movies, which are comic movies, things like Star Wars, there's basically two fundamental rules of those movies: the fanboys will go and the fanboys will bitch. Those are the only things that you can count on with any of those movies. And Star Wars, I because I don't, I don't, I assume you've seen The Force Awakens.
Dave Bullis 32:33
You know, Matt, I actually have not.
Matt R. Lohr 32:35
It's I will say this: I don't think it's the best movie of the year, but it might be the best time I had in a movie in 2015. I thought it was just just a heck of a lot of fun. I can't think of a better way to describe it. And when you get a movie that does the things you want the franchise to do, and it isn't just sped out of a computer, which you didn't want it to be, and isn't you know just you know midi chlorians and yippee and Jar Jar Binks, you have to latch onto whatever. So now it's Carrie Fisher looks too old. That's what we're getting, and I hear I understand that there's now an online petition to get George Lucas back to direct episode nine, and it's like you want to pull people's head and say it was 10 years ago that he did this. Don't you remember what happened the last time? You know, and it's just I don't know. It's fanboys are hard to please. I you know I it's it's God bless Dan for being willing to write genre material because genre audiences are very tough. They can be very tough to be. I will say, I'm not knocking genre audiences because one thing I've had the pleasure of experiencing in the process of promoting this book is I've gotten to go to a lot of horror events. I've spoken at Monster Palooza in Burbank. I've done a couple signs at Dark Delicacies, which is a fantastic horror store here in LA. And just talking to fans, I don't know if there's anybody in the world I like more than horror fans. They are so passionate and they are so informed, and they love the genre so much. It is just, and it they've really embraced me. You know, I'm because I'm kind of, you know, when I started this whole thing out. It took me a while to get used to the fact that I wasn't just a barnacle on the SS Dan O'Bannon. That I wasn't just the thing you had to put up with because Dan's not here to talk about his own book. And the horror community has so embraced this book and so embraced me as an element of this book. And it's just I'll I'll I'll be eternally grateful, and I will defend horror and its fans to my to my last breath for for that.
Dave Bullis 34:27
I concur. I you know the the horror fans are always the ones that come out in droves, and the horror fans also, you know, I was talking with this to a producer because we were talking about you know what genre would actually, you know, give the best ROI? And I always say it-it would be horror. Oh, sure. Because you know, horror fans will go see a B horror movie. Comedy fans won't go see a B comedy, if you know what I mean.
Matt R. Lohr 34:53
Yeah. Well, horror is one of the only genres out there where the genre is the star of the film in a lot of respects. You know. It's not like oh, I'm going to see this because Brad Pitt's in it, or I'm going to see this because you know Leonardo DiCaprio's in it. They go see it because it's a horror movie. I'd say maybe the only genre like that right now that's a genre that's has had its ups and downs over the years, but I think is starting to reach a little bit of a new renaissance is westerns. I see a lot of interesting westerns, mostly independent westerns, coming out. Like you know, we had the Hateful Eight, which I thought was interesting-not perfect, but interesting. Bone Tomahawk, which I thought was a terrific movie from last year with Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins. You know, we had Slow West. There's Jane Got a Gun, which comes out in a few weeks. So it's an interesting time for the genre. But I think there are a lot of people who see them simply because they're westerns and they like western movies, and I think the tricky part of that becomes because people go just because it's horror. You get a lot of really bad horror movies out there because people just think, oh well, they'll just go if we we throw some gore and some tits at them. But when you have one that's really great, I write a blog called The Movie Zombie, and I write about all kinds of movies. And last year for 2014, my number one film of the year was *The Babadook* which is the Australian horror film by Jennifer Kent. And I just think that's a movie that's so working with a small budget and is so inventive and comes up with really powerful and profound things to say. And and I will say this: It doesn't always connect. Even ones that connect with a lot of people don't always connect with me. If you look at my blog for 2015, my pick for my least favorite movie of the year was It Follows, which is a movie that I know people really, really loved, and it just it did not work for me at all. And so it's it is if you know the genre well enough, you can pick up the nuances of what people are really doing beyond just this is a horror movie, but yeah, horror. But you do make a very great point about the ROI. I think that's very very true because the genre itself has a built-in following, and and you know if if you're in a star driven thing, you struggle if you have a star that doesn't have a built-in following. Horror always does.
Dave Bullis 36:58
I actually had on a independent director, and and and his producer on the podcast about a couple about you know maybe 10 or so episodes ago and when they were done shooting their comedy he actually you know took it around to a lot of these distributors and they actually said who's in it and when he told them he they said we can't sell this right and he said that's the one thing he learned is if you're going to make a comedy, it has to have a name in it in one of the principal roles. Or you could do what you know the sort of bait and switch. What some people have done, which is like there was a movie a couple years ago. Elijah Wood was in it for like five minutes, but they put him on the cover, and people would buy it and go, "What the hell is this? He's barely even in the movie.
Matt R. Lohr 37:39
Yeah, well that that does happen too. I mean, you see, you see a lot of films. We we have a theater near where I live here in L.A. that basically shows a lot of these films that come out direct to video. You know, more or less direct to video will have a situation in their contracts when they contract with the distributor that they have to get at least one week of theatrical play in New York or Los Angeles. And I live near a theater that shows a lot of these sort of contractual obligation screenings. Like, if any of you have heard of a horror film called Wolves from a couple years ago, there was a werewolf movie with Jason Momoa in it from from Game of Thrones. That was a movie I got to see on the big screen because we got sort of the contractual obligation screening of it. It was I saw a movie from last year called Super Fast, which was basically the guys that did meet the Spartans taking on the Fast and Furious franchise, which played for a week, and I went and saw that. It's not good. I don't recommend you seek out Super Fast, but it is an opportunity to get to see some of these things. But that's an excellent point about not being able to sell without a star. Comedy is a fairly star-driven genre. I mean, there's not a lot of people even that can really open a comedy. One of the people that seems to be able to do it just had a movie come out this weekend, which is Kevin Hart, who has Ride Along too, that just came out. I'd say Melissa McCarthy seems to be somebody right now that maybe has the power to to open a comedy, and you know we'll see. And I mean, you every now and then you get a comedy franchise that really connects. Like obviously, the Hangover movies did very well and really connect. And I think the second movie outgrossed the first one even by a substantial margin. But yeah, it is tricky, and comedy also is also a tricky investment for studios because comedy doesn't travel overseas, humor is very subjective and it's very cultural. So it's easier to take something like The Avengers, which is all action-driven, and make that play overseas than it is to take something that's humor-driven, which might not land with a Chinese audience or an Indian audience or an Italian audience.
Dave Bullis 39:38
Yeah, you know it's interesting you say that too because I remember a couple years ago, the number one movie in China was an independent Chinese movie called Lost in Thailand, and it was literally about three Chinese businessmen who get lost in Thailand. The title may have given that away, but but but but they get lost in Thailand, and and and honestly, they there was talk of actually showing it here in America, and they actually I don't think they ever did it because I think one of the reasons was they were afraid that American audiences weren't going to get it because it was, you know, a Chinese comedy.
Matt R. Lohr 40:23
Yeah, and that's very understandable. I mean, a lot of times, if you look at box office figures for different nations around the world, you'll see films showing up in their top 10s of the year that do not even play in the United States, and I think people do forget that. A lot of times, when we get foreign films, because people always say, "Well, why are foreign films so much better than what they get? We get in America. That's because we're only getting the best foreign films. They're not bringing over the popcorn movies and the studio comedies and things like that because they figure there's no audience for them. And every country has its own infrastructure of stars and directors. India has, which also this theater near me that shows these contractual obligations shows a lot of Indian films as well. They show a lot of Bollywood movies, and they have one of the biggest and most intricate star systems in the world. Their movies are very star driven in India, and actually every now and then we do see an Indian star show up in American movie. There's a film showing at that theater right now, starring an Indian actor named Abitab Bachchan, who some people might remember from the Leonardo DiCaprio Great Gatsby that came out a few years ago. He played Meyer Wolfsheim in that movie, and you have people like Ashwarya Rai and Irfan Khan, who was in Jurassic World last year. He's one of the biggest movie stars in India, and it is interesting to see that you know we sort of think those things are unique to America, but they're really not. And and you know our our movies that travel overseas are these movies that are you know as I have a friend who's a film journalist, as he puts it, you know big gunfights and stuff gonna explode. Like obviously you know one one of the biggest movies in China of all time now is Transformers: Age of Extinction, which is a movie that was perceived to have somewhat underperformed here in the states. But the perception is it's gonna get a sequel because it grossed something like a billion dollars in China, so they made crazy money overseas.
Dave Bullis 42:15
I do remember that that Transformers movie when it came out, and I actually didn't see it. I just remember there's a there was an image where it was like a giant Transformer samurai, and I was like, I wonder if they know that's Japanese. I'm not gonna say. I was like, you know what? Maybe somebody will tell them. Who knows? But but I do remember they they actually shot specifically shot scenes specifically in China for Chinese audiences, and I remember that was the big hook that you know they were using for this because I know, and also I think they were trying to to finagle getting that Chinese film tax credit,
Matt R. Lohr 42:54
Yeah,
Dave Bullis 42:54
And because you have to shoot 60% or so of the movie over there, and it also has to show China in a good light, but if you do those two things, like that, that that's what gives you the the pass for that their film tax credit. I don't I don't know if they actually made it or not, but but yeah, I do remember that Transformers. What was that? What was that for?
Matt R. Lohr 43:13
Yeah, Transformers. Transformers four. Yeah, and the whole thing is movies have been doing that sort of thing for years. If you remember a film from 1995 called Johnny Mnemonic with Keanu Reeves, which is a terror. It's a terrible movie, but if you if you remember if you see the American version of that movie, there's real brief little bits with Dolph Lundgren playing a character, and also real little bits with Takeshi Kitano, the Yakuza film star. Those films, if you saw them in Europe, you would have seen a lot more Dolph Lundgren because they shot special scenes for the European market with more of him because he's a bigger name in Europe. Same thing with Takeshi Kitano. There's a lot more scenes of him in the Asian version, specifically in the Japanese version because he's a huge movie star in Japan. So they shot extra scenes, including his character. So there are these senses where they do tailor films to sort of cater to different different parts of the world. Which I mean, to be fair, that considering how much movies cost, that's not the least sensible thing they could possibly be doing.
Dave Bullis 44:10
Yeah, you know, one thing from Johnny Mnemonic that I always remember is the cyborg Jesus.
Matt R. Lohr 44:15
That's that's um the Dolph Humbrein character, unless I'm mistaken. I think maybe I'm wrong, but I don't. I barely remember anything about. I remember. I remember wanting to walk out of it. That's all I remember about Javadi is sitting there going, "Jesus, when? What? It's 45 minutes into this. How much longer is this? I will say though, I'm very proud. I've never walked out of a movie in the theater in my life. I've come very close a couple of times, but I've every movie I've seen in the theater, I've stayed through to the sometimes frightfully bitter end.
Dave Bullis 44:44
Yeah, I I concur. Even when there's been some movies where I've just wanted to walk out, but I said, you know what, I'm just going to power through it, and that way at least I can say, okay, I say saved the whole thing. I know it was a it was a bad movie, and
Matt R. Lohr 44:59
Right.
Dave Bullis 45:00
Maybe a lesson learned, right?
Matt R. Lohr 45:01
Well, here's the whole thing: if you don't stay through the whole thing, you can't say it's a bad movie. You can say it has a bad first hour. You don't, you don't know, you know what I mean. Although sometimes you do, because a couple years ago, I remember I'm going to see, believe it or not, I remember going to see Battlefield Earth, and it's one of only two films I've ever seen in the theater because I wanted to see if it was as bad as people were saying it was, and two minutes in, I kind of relaxed because I was like, "Oh, this is going to be terrible. I can absolutely tell it's Battlefield Earth is bad almost from the very first shot. And I, in a weird way, I appreciate that kind of integrity because it's there's nothing worse than a movie that starts out and has a good first 20 minutes or a good half hour, and then slowly but surely flies off of the rails and stops working. And Battlefield Earth had the respect for its audience to give them a consistently terrible time the entire way through.
Dave Bullis 45:50
You know, I actually had the screenwriter Corey Mandell on the podcast.
Matt R. Lohr 45:54
Oh, very good
Dave Bullis 45:55
Of Battle, and I actually, I mean, I had to bring it up. I mean, and I and I just wanted to ask him, you know, because he actually is a very good screenwriting teacher. Sure. And he said he said, Dave, this is basically this is what happened. He said, I swear to God, the the the draft that I turned in to John Travolta was completely different than what you see on the screen.
Matt R. Lohr 46:15
Yeah, that's the least surprising thing I've ever heard. Because you know, honestly, because even just the fact that he even got a movie through to a studio, anybody that does that is is a talented person. I really do believe that. I just knowing, having been in the trenches myself and slugged it out, and I'm a talented writer, and I know how tough it is. So the very fact that Corey Mandell even has his name on a studio movie, even if it's Battlefield Earth, is a testament to what he can do.
Dave Bullis 46:42
He goes into length about you know just you know going through the writing process. I mean, and and you're you're absolutely right, Matt, because he he is a talented writer. He he certainly knows you know his you know the the whole process of of screenwriting, not not in a very simple way, but I mean in depth. You know what I mean? Like just going through the the the sort of very the atoms, as I like to call it, the atoms of screenwriting, where you get really, really down deep into it, and you know that's one of the things he always says. Though is, is Matt, you know, is he actually sold a project to really Scott, but yet this is the one that gets made. But you know, after Battlefield Earth,
Matt R. Lohr 47:15
Yeah. Sometimes you you know you never know. It's good that you bring up the point about sort of really getting down deep, because one of the things that is interesting, I think about Dan's book, and you've read it, so you you know some of this, is Dan is very willing to admit that there's certain things he's basically not going to address in the book. For one thing, he does not cover dialog writing really at all. There's there's a general school of thought that Dan subscribes to, which is the idea that dialog is not really something that he feels can be taught. It's something that has to come out sort of more innately. It's a question of being a good listener and having generally strong language skills. Because I, I know when I do my own dialog, and if I may toot my own horn slightly, I do think in my own work dialog is a strength of mine. A lot of it comes from just being a good listener, and also when I write, if you if there are people listening who are screenwriters, if you're not already doing this, you need to be reading your dialog out loud to yourself when you're writing it, because you're not writing words that have to live on a page. You're writing lines that actors have to be able to say. And if it's garbled or the message is unclear or you trip over it saying it, chances are an actor is going to do the same thing. And also, sometimes you can surprise yourself with certain phrasings and ways of putting things that will come out. Sometimes I get to the point where I'm just literally transcribing as I'm talking and just writing down things, or basically extemporizing out of my mind when I'm writing my dialog. And Dan even basically says in the book, if you remember, he says, "I'm not here to teach you how to write well. What I'm here to do is to teach you how to put together a screenplay with a structure that holds up. He always says, you know, I I wasn't. The great example he uses is he talks about helping Ron Chisset on a movie he was producing called Phobia, which was a movie that ended up being directed by John Huston in the early '80s, and he thought it was a script that was not very good, but he basically sort of reworked the structure of it, and the way Dan described is, he said, "I was able to use this structural system I designed to transform the movie from a sow's ear that I didn't want to watch into a Sal's ear I did want to watch, and that's simply by making the structure of the story hold up, so there was a solid through line from beginning to end. So that's something that Dan's book can can help you do. It can at least if you have if your script is still problematic after working with Dan's system, the structure is not going to be one of the things you'll need to worry about.
Dave Bullis 49:32
Yeah, and you know the the book does cover just yeah I mean it does cover every structure you can think of you know because you know it goes it starts off. I mean, we're starting for those of you who haven't read the book yet. I mean, it starts off with Aristotle's Poetics. Yeah, and I mean that that's as far back as I mean we can go, right, man? I mean,
Matt R. Lohr 49:49
Not when you're talking story. That's as far back as it goes, basically, as far as dramatic storytelling. Yeah, we we we address Lajos Agri, we address Sid Field, Robert McKee. We didn't get too much into Blake Snyder, who's kind of like the big hot screenwriter now, the author of Save the Cat, late author of Save the Cat. The main reason we didn't delve into that is was simply this: Save the Cat is a Michael Weasley production's book, as is Dan O'Bannon's guide to screenplay structure. And then we didn't want to risk, you know, frankly, we didn't want to risk cutting into another a fellow author in the imprints readership. We thought that would be somewhat unfair. I guess we didn't have the same reservations about cutting into State Field or Robert McKee's readership. God bless both their souls. But you know, fortunately, I do think that Dan. I think that the reason that Dan included some of that background is he wanted to give you a sense that this storytelling system is fresh, but it also exists on a continuity with the way stories have sort of been set up and structured since the beginning of time. And I think that it it's an interesting thing. You know, we talk about movies that are sort of done in real time, like we touch on High Noon, we touch on the setup, which is a boxing film for the 40s that Dan and I watched together. You don't see that done as much nowadays, but I notice you see a lot more of these sort of one take scenes and things like that that are playing around with that idea in a small way. And for example, last night I just saw 13 Hours, which is the new. Speaking of Michael Bay, it's the new Michael Bay movie about the Benghazi attack, and that movie deals with a very compressed frame of time. It's right there in the title, and I think that they work actually within that time frame pretty well and give you a sense of kind of how things are going to play out within that time frame. That's Aristotle's unity of time, place, and action actually comes off fairly well, believe it or not, in the new Michael Bay movie.
Dave Bullis 51:42
I saw my Twitter timeline. Somebody actually said Michael Bay has succeeded in making a better Middle Eastern war movie than Clint Eastwood.
Matt R. Lohr 51:51
Yeah, that was me. I said that was you. All right. I do. I wasn't. I think. I think it's. I'm not going to get into a lot because it's a relatively new movie, but I do think that the movie's got some nuances to it and some some thoughtfulness and some complexity that I really was not expecting to see in a movie that ends with the words directed by Michael Bay. And in his defense, I think he helps to shepherd some of that along. I think he gets good, effective, low key performances out of his cast. I think John Krasinski finally shakes off the mantle of Jim Halpert firmly with this performance and does a really great job. You know, he's working with a two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer, Dion Beebe, shooting digitally, fully digital for the first time in a Michael Bay movie. And I think that it, I think it works. I think it's it's going to be tough going for people because it's not, it's not a an easy story. It's not a story with a happy ending, but I think that if people are willing to give it a chance, I think they'll they'll get something out of it.
Dave Bullis 52:46
I'll definitely check that out. And I, you know, a lot of the war movies that were coming out, I think you know, some people started to get kind of burned out by them because I know I was getting burned out. I still saw American Sniper.
Matt R. Lohr 52:58
Yeah,
Dave Bullis 52:58
I still saw Lone Survivor, but you know some of the other movies that came out. Eventually, I think people just got a little too burned out by them. So maybe you know. But I will check out the Michael Bay 13. Was it 13 hours? Right.
Matt R. Lohr 53:10
13 hours. Yeah, just came out yesterday.
Dave Bullis 53:12
Yeah, I will. I will make sure to check that out. And but you know, I wonder too. You know, if there ever will be a stop of of all these the Iraq war movies, and you know, I mean, most of them are about Iraq. I mean, I don't think there's any that have been about Afghanistan.
Matt R. Lohr 53:27
Well, Benghazi technically was in Libya, so this is actually a different a different area of the world. But you know, it kind of all falls under that umbrella sort of quote conflict in the Middle East. And I guess one of the things that's tricky is that we live in a world where people don't know the nuances of the differences between Iraq, between Libya, between Afghanistan. That they look over there and they just see it as one thing. They see, oh, that's Arabs. Get them, get the Arabs. And I think the the movie addresses the fact. One of the characters actually says at one point, it drives us crazy. We can't tell who's good and who's bad. And it's this idea of this sort of-I mean, I'm getting into political stuff that probably is beyond the purview of this show-but it's this idea of this sort of toxic mutual mistrust on both sides in that region of the world that sort of affects what's going on. I think that's something that the movie gets along, gets out very elegantly and without a whole lot of fuss and muss about. And I think it's just-it's inherent to the material, and I think it carries across pretty well.
Dave Bullis 54:22
Yeah, I, you know, I didn't even realize that that was. Yeah, I made a complete gaffe there. But you,
Matt R. Lohr 54:30
You, and probably most of the people that want to be president later this year. So that's fine.
Dave Bullis 54:33
Well, Matt, I'm actually announcing my candidacy right now for president of the United States. I'm not old enough, but damned it! But be damned, I'm gonna run.
Matt R. Lohr 54:42
Listen, if the evidence is any indication I've seen so far, we could certainly do a lot worse.
Dave Bullis 54:47
Well, thank you very much, man.
Matt R. Lohr 54:50
Oh, sure, no problem.
Dave Bullis 54:52
You know, Matt, we're we're starting to to run out of time, and you know, there's more questions I want to ask you, but I. I'll have to have you back sometime for interest ever in coming back.
Matt R. Lohr 55:02
Absolutely.
Dave Bullis 55:03
So, so one of the final questions I want to ask you is, you know, what is the one thing? I know this is going to be a trick question, but what is the one thing, the biggest thing that you took away from working with Dan O'Bannon?
Matt R. Lohr 55:17
That's that's a great question, and I know exactly what the answer is. And you sort of alluded to it earlier with something that you said when you talked about one of the things that was great about Dan is that he was able to cover a lot of different types of genres. He did action films, he did humorous films, he did horror, he did science fiction, and I think the reason for that is because Dan, and this is something I took away from Dan, never thought of himself as a genre writer. He thought of himself. He always said, "I'm a storyteller. A lot of my stories just happen to involve monsters and things from outer space. And he always privileged the story over the genre in which the story was being told. And the the thing that I took from that, and the message he gave me, was regardless of what type of film you're trying to create, you owe it to yourself, to your muse and to your audience, to create the best whatever that is that you can. If you're making a $10,000 camcorder shot creature feature that you're shooting in a basement on the weekends, you owe it to your audience and you to make the best $10,000 camcorder shot movie that you're shooting on weekends creature feature in your basement that you possibly can muster out of your spirit, and I've always tried to keep that in mind, and I've always tried to give my all and my best whatever I'm writing. And I've I've written a lot of different genre stuff as well. I mean, I'm looking right now at a wall that's got some screenplay awards I've won at festivals, and I've got an award for a science fiction movie, an award for a horror movie and an award for an action thriller, and one of the bigger projects I worked on a couple years ago was an adaptation of a comic strip, sort of in the mold of an Alvin and the Chipmunks kind of a movie, and I gave my best to that too. And that was a job I got based on a comedy script that I'd written and submitted to them as a writing sample that they liked. So whatever you're writing, you just owe it to yourself to not talk down to your audience, to give it your all, to give it your best, and to put your best self forward all the time. Because nobody else is going to do that for you. That's the main thing that I took from Dan, and one of the main things I hope people take if they read this book.
Dave Bullis 57:17
You know that is an excellent, excellent thing to take away from from Dan, you know Dan loved movies. It was evident in his writing. It was you know evident. I mean, even in your story about him having the broadswords on the wall, yeah. Because I'm sure that was an ode towards you know the Chinese martial arts, because you know just everything about Dan was was fun. And from the interviews I've seen with him, it was all you know he just loved life, and he loved telling these stories. And you know, that is even in the book. Even when when you're reading that book, you can just tell that it comes from a place where this is what he was put on Earth to do, and there's no other question about that.
Matt R. Lohr 57:54
When I read parts of the book, I hear it in my mind in Dan's voice, and I think that if you read that book. You're getting Dan, and I think that's a very important thing to keep that voice alive as well.
Dave Bullis 58:05
And the one thing that I'm glad his wife actually agreed to be put in there was the one chapter that Dan was going to leave out.
Matt R. Lohr 58:12
Oh yeah,
Dave Bullis 58:12
And then and then she insisted. Then she actually said, "You know what? Dan is no longer with us. I'm just going to put the chapter in.
Matt R. Lohr 58:18
Yeah, we we could have done a whole other hour just on that issue. It's a it's a section on a subject called hedonic adaptation. If you read the book, it's a psychological understanding that was developed in the 1970s by a group of psychologists, and it's it applies very strongly to the way effective on-screen stories are told. So it's a section that's definitely going to teach you a lot in terms of what your movies can do to your audience, and it's really, really interesting to consider.
Dave Bullis 58:44
Yeah, again, Matt. Anytime you want to come back on, I'd love to have you because I can tell you, you're the type of guy I could talk to for hours about movies and stuff like that.
Matt R. Lohr 58:51
This was a pleasure. I'd be happy to come back.
Dave Bullis 58:53
Like, have you ever seen the movie Kill Dozer?
Matt R. Lohr 58:55
I have not, but I'll get on that. That'll be my that'll be my homework for next time.
Dave Bullis 58:59
What I like to do is I put I like to get three movies that are similar and put them together and I always have like a killer vehicle trio and it's usually Kill Dozer, The Car, and Maximum Overdrive.
Matt R. Lohr 59:13
Nice, very good.
Dave Bullis 59:14
It's not yeah. If the Car is actually my favorite haunted car movie ever.
Matt R. Lohr 59:19
Oh, interesting.
Dave Bullis 59:19
It's even even more than Christine. I don't know if you ever seen the car, but
Matt R. Lohr 59:22
Ah, yeah, I have. Yeah, definitely.
Dave Bullis 59:23
Okay, excellent. But yeah, I, you know, again, Matt. Oh, you know, it's a pleasure having you on. And Matt, where can people find you at online?
Matt R. Lohr 59:32
Well, I'm on Facebook. You can find me as Matt R. Lohr. I'm also there's a page for Dan O'Bannon's Guide to Screenplay Structure. Just search for the title of the book. I'm also on Twitter. I have two Twitter feeds. I'm at the Movie Zombie and at Dan O'Bannon Book. And the Movie Zombie handle is my blog, which is themoviezombie.blogspot.com, where I comment on contemporary and classic cinema of all types.
Dave Bullis 59:56
Excellent. And everyone, I will link to all that in the show notes as well, Matt. Lore, Matt Arlor. I want to say thank you. Say thank you very much for coming on.
Matt R. Lohr 1:00:05
It was it was a it was a real treat, Dave. Thanks for having me.
Dave Bullis 1:00:08
Oh, my pleasure. And again, we'll we'll we'll be in touch soon for you to come back on. And you know, and I look forward to hearing what you think about Kill Dozer.
Matt R. Lohr 1:00:15
Sounds good.
Dave Bullis 1:00:16
Take care, bye.
Matt R. Lohr 1:00:17
Take care.
Dave Bullis 1:00:18
Bye!
Sign up to receive email updates
Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast.
LINKS
- Instagram(opens in new tab)
- Matt R. Lohr – IMDb(opens in new tab)
SPONSORS
- Bulletproof Script Coverage – Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals
- Audible(opens in new tab) – Get a Free Filmmaking or Screenwriting Audiobook
