BAFTA 2011 Screenwriters Lecture Series: John Logan
On Tuesday 20th September, at London’s National Film Theatre, WhatCulture! was very kindly invited to the 2011 BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters Lecture Series in association with the JJ Charitable Trust to see screenwriter John Logan talk about his career.
Screenwriter John Logan has put words into the mouths of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe and Al Pacino to name but a few and, not only has he picked up two Academy Awards and two BAFTA nominations, somewhere in his house theres a mantelpiece glimmering with a Tony award and a Golden Globe. Not bad for a man whos yet to turn fifty and didnt write his first screenplay until he was thirty, right? On Tuesday 20th September, at Londons National Film Theatre, WhatCulture! was very kindly invited to the 2011 BAFTA and BFI Screenwriters Lecture Series in association with the JJ Charitable Trust to see screenwriter John Logan talk about his career. Not only has he worked closely with the actors mentioned above, Logan also has a close working relationship with most of Hollywoods directing elite including Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese (whom he refers to as Marty), Michael Mann and Ridley Scott. Because of this you could forgive Logan for being a little full of himself, but in fact he couldnt have come across more amiable with a real willingness to pass on his knowledge. On his breaking in story, Logan told the sold-out audience that after university he worked for ten years stacking books at a Library and writing plays at night during which time he was broke and living in a studio apartment in Chicago. It wasnt until a young TV executive/aspiring agent saw one of his plays and said that they should try and develop it into a TV mini-series that he ever considered being a screenwriter. Whilst that didnt take off, the now junior agent at major agency CAA told Logan that he should write down ten ideas for movies, fly to LA and pitch them, then take a year off and focus solely on writing the best one. That one idea was pitched as King Lear in the NFL and became what we now know to be Any Given Sunday. Days after turning in his draft to the agent, Oliver Stone was on the phone telling Logan that he needed to hop on a plane and meet him in Japan where he was doing press and before Logan knew it he was a bona fide Hollywood Screenwriter with his script being made by a famous Director. 
The audience was then treated to a showreel of clips from Logans films and also an exclusive five-minute preview of Martin Scorsese's new film Hugo (I wish that I had a scoop about this to tell you, but it was literally a very talky scene between two young children with nothing being given away). Logan then returned to the stage to discuss his craft a little more in depth. For any aspiring screenwriters out there, Logan passed on the following pearls of wisdom: That you should read Hamlet until you understand every word of it. He said that he outlines before he writes but often that consists of just the scenes in bullet points and these outlines tend to run no more than 4 pages. Most importantly, he has to know the ending. He writes the first draft of any script as quickly as possible, often getting up at 4AM and writing for 12hrs a day, and even though it probably sucks, he convinces himself that each day hes writing King Lear. A first draft takes him 3 weeks to write. He doesnt show his early drafts to anyone and just rewrites until he is happy that the script is in a place that wont end his career. Apparently, Any Given Sunday went through 27 drafts before it hit the big screen. Like many writers, he admits that hes prone to overwriting and on Gladiator, Ridley Scotts main note to him was simply write less words. Finally, and most importantly, he says that if you lose interest in your protagonist during the writing process then youre fucked. John Logan also went on to talk about his work on the forthcoming 23rd James Bond movie which he spoke about HERE.