memo from the trenches by frank darabont

7/28/2019 Memo From the Trenches by Frank Darabont

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MEMO FROM THE TRENCHES by Frank Darabont

If Im any example, it took me nine years of starving, struggling andhoning my craft before I started making my living as a writer. Thosewere lean years, too, believe me. But in the nine years since then, I

havent stopped working. I consider myself very lucky, but I alsobelieve you can make your own luck by applying the elbow greaseof determination and effort, by nurturing a persistent belief inyourself no matter how bleak your chances seem (this philosophylurks at the very heart ofThe Shawshank Redemption, and is one ofthe main reasons I fell in love with Kings story). My standard joke actually, Im fairly serious is that there are potentially moretalented writers and directors than I working in shoe stores andBurger Kings across the nation; the difference is I was willing to putin the nine years of effort and they werent. More to the point, ittook Thomas Edison a thousand attempts before he got that damn

light bulb to turn on. Imagine if hed gotten discouraged enough toquit after onlynine hundred and ninety nine tries. The messagehere is simple, and John F. Kennedy said it best: We choose to goto the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Roughtranslation? If you have a dream, get up off your ass and startputting one foot in front of the other. Me, Ill take Kennedy andEdison over Beavis and Butt-head any old day.

MEMO FROM THE TRENCHES by Frank Darabont

I've had the great good fortune of being a professional screenwriter

(and, more recently, director) for going on ten years now. Peopleoften ask me what it's like doing what I do for a living -- a fairenough question, but usually phrased with a tone suggesting that ifI don't make it out to be as glamorous and fun as they think it oughtto be, they're going to be damn disappointed. It's an interesting andrewarding life, one I wouldn't trade for anything -- though I do haveto admit in all candor that the day-to-day of it isn't nearly as muchfun as I imagined when I was a kid dreaming of being in the moviebusiness one day. Not too long ago, I directed a movie based onStephen King's novella Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption

from his book Different Seasons (one of King's best; check it out ifyou haven't already). It stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman,plus a roster of dynamite actors that include Clancy Brown (a genrefavorite for his roles as The Kurgan in Highlander and Frankenstein'smonster in The Bride), Die Hard 2 tough guy Bill Sadler, bug-stompin' badass Mark Rolston from Aliens and unsung nationaltreasure James Whitmore (these days known mostly for his Miracle-Gro TV ads, but in my heart, he'll always be the compassionate copbattling giant ants in Them!, or the leader of the survivorsmarooned on a distant planet in Rod Serling's unforgettable "OnThursday We Leave for Home" episode of The Twilight Zone). In the

process of directing this film, I finally got to hang out with King after14 years of knowing him only through phone calls and
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correspondence (he dropped by the editing room to watch a fewreels, after which we shot the breeze over avocado-bacon-cheeseburgers at the Sundance Caf), got to know and pick thebrain of an extraordinary filmmaker named Rob Reiner (no strangerto King himself, having directed both Misery and Stand By Me -- for

my money the best adaptations of King to date, along withCronenberg's The Dead Zone), show my close-to-final cut to GeorgeLucas for his critique (he liked the film a lot) and meet the likes ofBarbra Streisand, Billy Crystal, Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, ArnoldSchwarzenegger and Susan Sarandon. OK, let's try something.Based on the above description, how many of you think what I do fora living sounds awfully glamorous and fun? C'mon, let's see thosehands. OK, maybe it's a little glamorous, but only now that I have amoment to think back on it. Mostly it's a hell of a lot of work andprecious little glitz of the sort that gets pounded down your throatby Entertainment Tonight or E! 365 relentless days a year. Don'tbelieve me? Let's try the flip side of the job description: I beganpreproduction on Shawshank in January 1993 -- casting, choosinglocations, endless rounds of meetings with key technical people, youname it. My producer, Niki Marvin, and I logged thousands offrequent flier miles and racked up countless late nights chewingover the merits of this actor vs. that (the only thing that made allthose way-past-midnight sessions really worth it was that ourcasting director, Deborah Aquila, could make us laugh our asses offand vice versa -- I swear, the later it got, the funnier we became).The prep phase went on for five months (three in Los Angeles, two

on location in Ohio), at the end of which I was utterly exhausted.You've heard of the proverbial one-legged man in the ass-kickingcontest? Well, prepping a film makes you feel like the guy whoseass he kicked. Then the real work began. Three months of shootingin Mansfield, Ohio, working 15 to 18 hours a day, six days a week,with barely enough time to sit. And on Sunday (supposedly my dayoff), I say around planning how to shoot the following week's scenes(doing homework, in other words). "Exhausting" is too wimpy a wordto describe it -- they have yet to invent a word that applies. Youwind up in a sort of zombielike daze, functioning on autopilot,reduced to putting one foot in front of the other like the kids in The

Long Walk by Stephen King, the finish line some mythical PromisedLand you try not to think about lest you go mad with homesicknessand despair, knowing that if you drop in your tracks, they'll shootyou and leave you behind for the buzzards to chow down on. Sleepbecomes a dim memory. The mental and physical stamina requiredis awesome. The stress is beyond belief. But the last day ofshooting does arrive. Congratulations, you've managed to slogthrough an eight-month endurance test of prepping and shootingthat's left you reeling like a punch-drunk palooka who somehowwent the distance in on of those old Warner Bros. boxing pictures.

Ready to throw in the towel yet? Too bad, bucko! 'Cause hot on theheels of filming comes postproduction, which -- while certainly


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kinder than what came before -- is an endurance test all its own (wespent our last month of post working seven days a week on the finalsound mix, blending dialogue, music and sound FX until our brainsdribbled out our ears). OK, now how glamorous and fun does itsound? Hmmm. I see fewer hands out there. I once asked George

Lucas why he hasn't directed in almost 20 years. His answer wasthat the job demands too much, takes too much out of you and flat-out wears you down to nothing (and this coming from a man withthe most tireless work ethic I've ever seen). Having now directed, Isee what he means. This film consumed nearly a year and a half ofmy life, friends, none of it glamorous and precious little of it fun, andall so some critic on TV can spend 30 seconds giving me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. But here's what the critics don't know: Theamazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that itgot made at all. That's amazing. By now you're probably saying toyourself, this Darabont sounds like an awful putz. Look at him, hegets to direct a major motion picture and all he does is complain. Ishe looking for sympathy? A pat on the back? Sad songs played onviolin? The answer is no to all of the above. I'm not seekinganything, I'm just telling you the day-to-day nature of what I dobecause some of you asked. Sympathy should be reserved for thosewho need it, not us guys fortunate enough to have realized a life'sdream. Nobody said it would be easy, or promised it would be fun.I've gotten to do what I set out to do, and there is deep satisfactionin that. If you ask me, I'll tell you I'm one of the luckiest guys on theplanet. But if it's not glamorous and it's not fun, if it's nothing but

gut-busting work, why do it? Let me fill you in on a little secret. Ithink we've been sold a bill of goods in the country. We've beenbrainwashed into swallowing hook-line-and-sinker the spurious beer-commercial dictum that "enjoyment" is the yardstick by which weshould measure the worthiness of any endeavor -- that anythingworth doing must also by definition be "fun." Our standards of whatwe expect from ourselves have eroded. We've been MTV-ed andNintendo-ed into oblivion, narcotized into junkiedom by the HomeShopping Network. Our icons are no longer the achievers of thisworld -- the Einsteins, the Schweitzers, the Lindberghs; now we'vegot Bart Simpson and Beavis and Butt-head as role models who can

make underachieving seem not only okay, but "cool." No, I'm notone of those censorious loons who believes that Beavis and Butt-head is the root of all our ills and woes -- I refuse to give it thatmuch credit -- but I seem to have less and less patience these dayswith things that celebrate and glamorize laziness and willfulstupidity. Neither ignorance nor underachievement are badges ofhonor to wear with pride. Sadly, though, our "politically correct"society has come to believe that nobody should be made to feelstupid. Therefore, if Johnny can't read, let's not challenge him tolearn -- let's lower the educational standards in our schools so

Johnny won't get his feelings hurt by being singled out as dumb.Swell idea -- except that Johnny and his classmates will turn out to


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be just another lost generation of functionally illiterate dickheadswho won't be able to read their own diplomas if and when theygraduate from high school. Sorry, folk, but I don't think ourforefathers really had "Party on, dude!" in mind when theyguaranteed the pursuit of happiness. Life doesn't come with a "fun

warranty." We aren't issued E-tickets when we're born. Life is whatwe make of it, and the saddest loss is not to explore your potentialwithin the short time you're given. If this is beginning to resemblean inspirational sermon, there's a reason. Having now done a fairnumber of talks at colleges and universities, I've begun to realizethat the one thing they don't teach in film school is how to believe inyourself. And yet, underlying the questions and answers that zipback and forth, I can always sense the need these students have tobe reassured that their goals and ambitions -- despite seeming sofar out of reach -- are attainable. But it takes effort. If I'm anyexample, it took me nine years of starving, struggling and honingmy craft before I started making my living as a writer. Those werelean years, too, believe me. But in the nine years since then, Ihaven't stopped working. I consider myself very lucky, but I alsobelieve you can make your own luck by applying the elbow greaseof determination and effort, by nurturing a persistent belief inyourself no matter how bleak your chances seem (this philosophylurks at the very heart of The Shawshank Redemption, and is one ofthe main reasons I fell in love with King's story). My standard joke --actually, I'm fairly serious -- is that there are potentially moretalented writers and directors than I working in shoe stores and

Burger Kings across the nation; the difference is I was willing to putin the nine years of effort and they weren't. More to the point, ittook Thomas Edison a thousand attempts before he got that damnlight bulb to turn on. Imagine if he'd gotten discouraged enough toquit after only nine hundred and ninety nine tries. The messagehere is simple, and John F. Kennedy said it best: "We choose to go tothe moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard." Roughtranslation? If you have a dream, get up off your ass and startputting one foot in front of the other. Me, I'll take Kennedy andEdison over Beavis and Butt-head any old day.

memo from the trenches by frank darabont

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